The objectives of this project are to develop and validate methodologies for chemical impurities and residual manufacturing agents in biological products whose presence may affect product safety or efficacy. These include: 1) residual glutaraldehyde used as inactivating or conjugating agent in vaccines, 2) residual tetrachloroethylene in pollen allergenic extracts and allergenic source materials, 3) inactive components of crude allergenic extracts and allergen patch test materials and 4) squalene in anthrax vaccine. Current work in progress, or that performed in the past year includes: 1) The development and validation of methods for the determination of tetrachloroethylene, used in the processing of pollen source materials for allergenic extracts. A purge-and-trap gas chromatographic method for tetrachloroethylene in allergenic extracts has been developed and validated, data has been obtained for a representative sampling of final products. The determination of this same compound in allergenic source materials by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry is in the process of validation, interim data on a representative sampling of pollen source materials have been collected. 2) An HPLC method for the determination of glutaraldehyde, involving pre-column derivatization with p-nitrobenzyl-hydroxylamine and UV detection has been developed, validatation studies are in progress. 3) Gas chromatographic and gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric methods have been developed and applied to anthrax vaccine for the determination of squalene as an alledged adulterant. 4) A recently acquired ion-trap HPLC/mass spectrometer will be used along with gas chromatography/mass spectrometry to develop a general procedure for impurities screening in a variety of products as well as the characterization of low-molecular weight compounds in allergenic extracts and allergen patch test products.
