"A bitter pill to swallow" may be an old adage, but it actually has meaning to today’s pharmaceutical industry and to chemists using modern chromatographic techniques.

The session "Pharmaceutical Analysis: Latest Trends in Taste and Flavor Assessment in Drug Product Formulations" went over the analytical techniques used to evaluate flavors and fragrances in pharmaceutical formulations. While flavor and odor analysis is common for the food and beverage industry, the pharmaceutical industry has just recently begun analysis to assist in quality control and patient compliance.

Presiding over this session was Kenneth J. Norris of Pfizer, who gave a presentation on the analytical methods for the analysis of flavors in pharmaceuticals. In his presentation, he discussed techniques such as e-nose, e-tongue, HPLC, LC/MS, DART, and GC techniques, and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

The remaining presentations discussed drug product characterization by macropixel analysis of chemical images, which gave details of exploring imaging-based algorithms that produce quantitative descriptions of heterogeneity, and then the session was ended with an overview of electronic tongue and nose applications for improving the taste and flavor acceptance of pharmaceutical products.