Setting the Stage

The panel explores what has driven nitrosamines to become one of the most scrutinised areas in pharmaceutical manufacturing, and why the challenge continues to feel unresolved despite years of intensive effort. Drawing on their respective backgrounds in consultancy, industry, academia, and toxicology, the panelists reflect on how scientific understanding has deepened over time, how the scope of the problem has broadened, and why progress in one area so often reveals new complexity in another. The discussion considers whether the field is genuinely advancing or whether the challenges are outpacing the solutions, and examines what this means for laboratories and organizations trying to keep up.

Moderated by Joseph Lackey, Technical Manager at LGC Standards, the discussion brings together Jason Brown, Principal Consultant at Brown Pharma Consulting Ltd, Maria Kristina Parr, a professor in pharmaceutical chemistry from the Freie Universität Berlin, Jörg Schlingemann, Director, Principal Expert Quality Control Systems at Merck Healthcare KGaA, and George Johnson, an associate professor at Swansea University.