Andrew Teasdale, PhD, is a senior principal scientist in impurity management and external advocacy at AstraZeneca. Andrew has over 20 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry as an analytical chemist and within quality assurance and regulatory roles. In his current role, he chairs AstraZeneca’s impurity advisory group. Andrew has published over 30 papers relating to genotoxic impurities and other impurity-related matters and has been a speaker at many international conferences. He has also led a number of industry expert groups; these include both safety and quality groups within Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), Product Quality Research Institute (PQRI), and the Extractables and Leachables Safety Information Exchange (ELSIE). Andrew led the recent development of the ICH M7 addendum table from an industry perspective and was the inventor of the purge tool concept, Mirabilis™. He also published a book addressing genotoxic impurities, ‘Genotoxic Impurities Strategies for Identification and Control,’ (Wiley and Son) and is soon to publish as editor a book focussed on practical implementation of ICH quality guidelines.

George Johnson is an associate professor of genetic toxicology at Swansea University. He has expertise in the quantitative use of genetic toxicity data for hazard and risk assessment purposes and has an interest in high content and multiplex in-vitro test systems. He currently has active roles in the HESI-GTTC, IWGT 2022, COM and EEMGS-EXCOM, and carries out teaching, research, and consultancy at Swansea.

Dr. BM Rao possess a PhD in chemistry and has about 31 years of work experience in pharmaceutical analytical R&D, quality control, and assurance functions in reputed organisations includes Janssen (pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & Johnson), Novartis, Zydus Cadila, Nicholas Piramal, and Dr. Reddy’s. He has extensive hands-on experience on analytical instruments related to chromatography, spectroscopy, and thermal analysis. He has exposure to various regulatory audits includes USFDA, EMEA, TGA, Health Canada, etc., and worked with reputed international consultants in QC remediation. He has about 80 scientific publications in reputed peer reviewed national/international journals and successfully guided eight part-time PhD candidates.

During his professional career he has been recognised for his contributions at work and won awards including Chairman’s Excellence Award from Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories (Feb. 2018 and Jan. 2003), “Standards of Leadership” from J&J at Janssen, Mumbai site (2010), and Best New Leader Award at SAI Life Sciences Limited (2013). He has extensively travelled to USA, Mexico, Germany, Belgium, Singapore, Brazil, and Malaysia, and interacted with several big and emerging biotech pharmaceutical analytical and quality experts.

Since September 2015, he has been working as head of quality for emerging markets, analytical science and technology (ASAT), and corporate quality control at Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories and providing technical leadership to the analytical method validations/transfers and quality control labs of APIs and formulations.

Dr. Rodney Parsons earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1986 from Trinity College and then received his PhD in 1992 from the University of Vermont under the guidance of Professor Martin E. Kuehne. His doctoral studies were focussed on the development of novel routes for the construction of indole alkaloids. He then carried out postdoctoral studies in organic chemistry with Professor Clayton H. Heathcock at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1994 he became a research scientist at Dupont-Merck Pharmaceutical Co., where he eventually rose to the rank of director. In 2001, after the acquisition of the DuPont Pharmaceuticals Co., he joined Bristol-Myers Squibb, where he is currently an executive director in the chemical process development department. He has been involved with drug development programs in a number of therapeutic areas including virology, cardiovascular, oncology, and metabolic diseases. His research interests include pharmaceutical process R&D, asymmetric synthesis, heterocyclic chemistry, and natural products total synthesis. He has been the BMS Mutagenic Impurity Assessment Committee (MIAC) chair since 2006. On the MIAC he leads an R&D-wide committee to establish control strategies for mutagenic impurities and align BMS internal practices with the evolving health authority regulations. Most recently he has led the end-to-end nitrosamine assessment and control process for the organisation. He has published over 40 papers and multiple patents in these areas.

Dr. Joel Bercu, MPH, DABT is a senior director in the nonclinical safety and pathobiology group at Gilead Science and has 20 years of public health/toxicology experience in pharmaceuticals. His mission while at these positions is to protect the safety of staff, patients, and the environment. He leads the environmental and occupational toxicology (EOT) group at Gilead. The EOT group provides expert toxicological documentation for occupational health categorisations/occupational exposure limits, permitted/acceptable daily exposures for cleaning validation, environmental risk assessments, pharmaceutical impurity assessments (including mutagenic/carcinogenic impurities), QSAR assessments of impurities for ICH M7 compliance, deviations, leachables and extractables, and excipients.

The EOT group is also responsible for monitoring and reviewing toxicology tests including ecotoxicology, mutagenicity testing for impurities, and worker safety testing. Prior to joining Gilead Sciences, he worked at Eli Lilly and Amgen. He is a member of the Society of Toxicology and the Risk Assessment, Occupational and Public Health (where he served as president), and medical devices specialty sections. He has had several external committees, such as chairing the IQ/DruSafe impurities working group and on the board of directors for the Extractables Leachables Safety Information Exchange (ELSIE). He received his bachelor's from Texas A&M University, MPH from University of Texas - Houston School of Public Health, PhD from Indiana University, and is a Diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology (DABT).

Dr. Paulo Eliandro da Silva Junior is a pharmacist-biochemist (USP) with a master's and PhD in medicinal chemistry, synthesis and drug discovery (FCFRP-USP, University of East Anglia – UEA, UK; Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz – JGU, Germany). Paulo's experience in the pharmaceutical industry started in 2013 as a trainee at Novartis, Horsham, UK, in the global discovery chemistry department. After that Paulo worked mainly in regulatory affairs, quality audits, and drug product and drug substance development with focus on impurities control, including E&L, mutagenic impurities, such as nitrosamines, in his own consulting company, Integra Consultancy. Paulo also is a founder of another company, BIND, which is a startup for synthesis and characterisation of analytical standard for development processes, and teaches postgraduate courses that cover various pharmaceutical topics.

Dr. Carla Landolfi graduated in chemistry and pharmaceutical technology from Rome University. She has more than 20 years of experience in the toxicology field gained in the pharmaceutical industry, 10 of them as manager to the toxicology group. She's the main or co-author of several papers and posters, has published in peer-reviewed journals, and she's an invited speaker at international conferences as well as the founding editor of archives of clinical toxicology. In 2020, she founded the ToxHub, a consultancy company specialised in toxicological risk assessment and regulatory toxicology.

Aloka Srinivasan, PhD, the principal and managing partner of RAAHA LLC (www.raahallc.com) has more than two decades of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, including nine years of progressive experience with the US FDA in the office of generic drugs, Lupin Pharmaceuticals, Lachman Consultants, and Parexel International.

Prior to starting her own consulting, Aloka was the VP and head of regulatory at Lachman, VP of regulatory at Lupin, and principal at Parexel. Aloka spent more than nine years in the FDA’s office of generic drugs as a reviewer and team leader and spearheaded the establishment of a division for review of APIs in Type II DMFs. Aloka was also part of the team that initiated the question-based review (QbR– QOS) for generic drugs in CDER.

Aloka is one of the world-class experts on nitrosamine based on her research background and has been supporting the industry in addressing these carcinogenic impurities in the drugs.

She received her PhD from the University of Missouri, Columbia, under Dr. Richard N. Loeppky of nitrosamine fame. Her thesis was titled, “Putative Intermediates in Activation of Beta Hydroxy Nitrosamines”. Aloka also spent seven years as a scientist at National Cancer Institute, working for Dr. Larry K. Keefer, researching on nitrosamines in potential nitric oxide donor drugs.

Joerg Schlingemann is a director and principal expert for quality control systems within Merck KGaA’s/EMD Serono’s healthcare quality unit. He studied molecular biology in Uppsala and Heidelberg, where he completed a doctorate degree at the German Cancer Research Center in 2005.

He has 14 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry from various roles within quality control and quality assurance. Since late 2019, Joerg has been leading EMD Serono’s analytical activities for N-nitrosamines, based on which he has authored or co-authored several scientific publications dealing with analytical challenges, NDMA in metformin, nitrite in excipients and the prevalence of NDSRIs. Joerg is an advocate of scientific collaboration, data sharing and expressive visualisation of data. He is married and has three children.

Marina Couva has a lot of experience in the pharmaceutical industry in the fields of both quality and safety. She is a pharmacy graduate, a registered pharmacist in Cyprus, and also holds a master's degree in management.

She has served in a number of positions in Medochemie Ltd, a generics pharmaceutical company with headquarters in Lemesos (Limassol), Cyprus. She is a qualified person and currently holds the role of the QPPV, as well as the position of group quality senior manager, responsible for GDP. Her experience spreads across many issues relating to GxP compliance, combining quality and safety.

Thurloch O’Criodain has been working in quality management for over 40 years. He gained his PhD in chemistry from the National University of Ireland in 1980, and he became a qualified person in 1984. Over the years, he has worked with some of the biggest names in the industry: Abbott Laboratories, Wyeth, Johnson & Johnson, and Novartis. Thurloch has worked in leadership positions both locally and globally. Since 2018, he has been working as a consultant, helping companies to troubleshoot quality and compliance issues. One of those issues is the contamination of sartans with nitrosamines, and that is what he is here to talk to us about today.