2019 AOAC Annual Meeting - Preliminary Program

Wiley Award Address Nature Exposed to Our Method of Questioning: Reliability of Measurements Made on Natural Products

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2019 1 : 00 pm – 1 : 30pm Joseph M. Betz, Ph.D., Acting Director, Office of Dietary Supplements, U.S. National Institutes of Health Wiley Award winner Joseph M. Betz, acting director of the Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, USA, will deliver the Wiley Award Address and chair the Wiley Award Symposium at this fall’s AOAC Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, USA. In his address, “Nature Exposed to Our Method of Questioning—Reliability of Measurements Made on Natural Products,” Betz will examine the principles of assuring data integrity and provide an overview of approaches to demonstrating method performance. He will stress the importance of demonstrating integrity and reproducibility in natural products research.

Natural product research encompasses a spectrum of biomedical and chemical investigations ranging from new compound discovery to pharmacokinetic and other clinical studies. Common to such investigations is the need to demonstrate integrity and reproducibility of interventions and data collected about the interventions and clinical data. Data quality efforts include assuring that biomass is properly identified, herbarium specimens are kept and cataloged, quantitative chemical measurements are accurate and precise, and analytical methods are transferrable to other laboratories. Modern research on botanicals may include discovery of bioactive phytochemicals, including investigations of synergistic effects of complex mixtures in the botanical matrix. In the phytomedicine field, botanicals and their contained mixtures are considered the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), and natural product scientists are increasingly called upon to supplement their molecular discovery work by assisting in the development of analytical tools for assessing complex products. Unlike single-chemical API, botanicals are variable because their composition depends on genotypic and phenotypic variation, geographical origin, weather exposure, harvesting practices, and processing. Inherent variability in raw materials and proprietary manufacturing processes can result in inconsistent research materials and commercial products that are under-potent, over-potent, and/or contaminated. Natural product chemists have routinely developed quantitative methods for phytochemicals of interest as part their overall investigations. Publication of such methods occurs at the discretion of individual investigators, but when published, the methods described often serve as starting points for methods used by researchers and regulatory and quality control scientists. Ideally, published methods should be accurate, precise, and reproducible. Accordingly, the Wiley Award Address will focus on data quality efforts to ensure integrity of results and approaches to demonstrating method performance.

The Harvey W. Wiley Award is AOAC INTERNATIONAL’s top scientific honor, given annually for career accomplishments in the analytical sciences.

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