I-Corps: Accessible Chemical Authentication of Counterfeit and Falsified Medicines

Cuny City University Of New York, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is in providing a more rapid and cost-effective alternative method to chemically authenticate unknown substances in the field. By combining a portable chemical test card and a companion mobile app, potential customers within law enforcement or pharmaceuticals can readily test unknown substances on the job in real-time. In addition, the technology makes it easier to mine massive amounts of data from each chemical authentication. This allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the spread of counterfeit products in affected regions, thereby protecting whole communities from potentially harmful substances while enabling regulatory and government agencies to take effective measures against counterfeiters. This I-Corps project includes a patented chemical test card and a companion mobile app that have gone through extensive preliminary trials. The Paper Analytical Device (PAD) is an inexpensive chemical test card which enables fast in-field screening of pharmaceuticals using colorimetric analysis. The device currently detects up to 60 active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) commonly found in a variety of medicines such as antimalarials, antibiotics, and analgesics, along with excipients that are commonly found in counterfeit products such as binders, fillers, and tablet coatings. The Veripad mobile application enables instantaneous analysis of each PAD using a machine learning algorithm. The app gives a probability of a reacted PAD card matching the API using deep convolutional neural network models. Moreover, the app is able to perform chemical composition analysis from the 'hand crafted' features of chemical color changes generated using various image feature extraction and clustering algorithms, such as ICA, PCA, and K-means. With ongoing research, the PAD and mobile app has the potential to aid in the quality testing of a variety of pharmaceuticals to ultimately combat the spread of counterfeits. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.