Advancing Pharmaceutical GC Method Development with Vacuum UV Detection: Enhancing Peak Purity, Sensitivity, and Selectivity

Discover how VUV detection with the LUMA™ multichannel detector is revolutionizing pharmaceutical GC by enabling confident impurity profiling, even without complete chromatographic separation. This presentation explores how LUMA enhances specificity, accelerates method development, and strengthens regulatory compliance through rich spectral data and class-based compound identification.

Register Free: https://www.chromatographyonline.com/ca_w/vacuum-uv

Event Overview:

Gas chromatography (GC) remains an essential tool in pharmaceutical analysis, particularly for impurity profiling, residual solvent testing, and excipient characterization. However, the capabilities of traditional GC detectors can limit the depth and reliability of analytical insights required in a regulatory environment. Vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) detection has emerged as a transformative technology that addresses these limitations by offering spectral data and class-based compound discrimination.

Covering an absorption range from 118 nm to 1050 nm the LUMA™ multichannel VUV detector enables differentiation of structurally similar compounds—even when chromatographic separation is incomplete—facilitating confident peak purity assessment and deconvolution of coeluting analytes, supporting regulatory expectations for specificity and robustness. LUMA brings to GC what the photodiode array (PDA) detector offers to liquid chromatography: broad-spectrum, information-rich detection that enhances qualitative and quantitative analysis.
LUMA is a universal detector (nearly all compounds absorb except for the carrier gases), combining high sensitivity for trace-level detection with compound-class selectivity based on spectral fingerprints. This enables analysts to confidently detect and differentiate analytes, even in the presence of coeluting or structurally similar compounds. By enabling spectral resolution rather than relying solely on chromatographic separation, LUMA can enhance both the efficiency and reliability of impurity profiling and reduce the need for extended run times.

When used in conjunction with traditional detectors such as FID or MS, LUMA further strengthens confidence in method performance, improves data correlation, and accelerates decision-making during method development and validation.

This presentation will highlight the practical benefits of VUV detection in pharmaceutical GC workflows using LUMA, including improved peak identification, confident impurity profiling, and faster, more robust method development aligned with regulatory expectations. Case studies demonstrate how GC-VUV using LUMA supports R&D and QC environments by enabling more efficient and reliable analytical strategies.

Key Learning Objectives:

• Understand the theory and operation of the LUMA Multi-Channel VUV Detector.
• Understand how LUMA is advancing GC method development in the pharmaceutical industry.
• Understand how VUV detection using LUMA complements traditional detector technologies and supports both R&D and QC efforts.

Who Should Attend:

• Scientists working in pharmaceutical, analytical, and R&D labs interested in enhancing GC method development.

Speakers:

Richard Ladd
Managing Director
RML Consulting

Richard Ladd is a senior leader, owner, and director of RML Consulting, and an independent consultant to the pharmaceutical industry specializing in pharmaceutical development, manufacturing, and new technology innovation. He has over 35 years of pharmaceutical industrial experience spanning all stages of new drug discovery, development, scale-up, manufacturing, supply, and commercialization.

Ladd has an extensive track record of delivering in scientific, line, and project leadership roles across pharmaceutical R&D, regulatory CMC, the analytical instrument industry, and at the interface of academia and the public sector. He has extensive expertise in analytical and pharmaceutical development, regulatory CMC authoring, and reviewing regulatory submissions from first-in-human to NDA/MAA, as well as defending regulatory submissions and conducting prep-approval audit inspections of both manufacturing and analytical facilities. In addition, he has a passion for new technology development and adoption and is an impeccable technical problem solver with a proven track record of resolving many commercially significant problems.

He has extensive experience with the European Union, United States, China, Japan, India, and other emerging markets. He is highly active, networked, and influential across an extensive portfolio of academic, industrial, health care, public sector, and policy-related matters. As a lucid communicator, Ladd sets and provides clarity on strategic direction, challenges the status quo, and drives improvement. He regularly presents at international meetings, most recently on the subjects supporting quality by design strategies with technology solutions in pharmaceuticals, technology adoption for technical trouble shooting, and driving efficiency and productivity to shorten development times by utilizing novel technological solutions.

Sam Whitmarsh
Director of Analytical Science
Catsci Ltd

Sam Whitmarsh, PhD, has 20 years of R&D experience at AstraZeneca, BP, and CatSci. After completing his PhD at the University of Bristol, he held roles in analytical science at AstraZeneca, founded BP's UK mass spectrometry facility, and led the BP Global Analytical Science Network. Whitmarsh joined CatSci as head of scientific operations in 2020 and became Director of Analytical Science and Digital Transformation in 2022. Whitmarsh is a Royal Society of Chemistry fellow serving with the separation science and chemical information and computer applications interest groups

Register Free: https://www.chromatographyonline.com/ca_w/vacuum-uv