Introduction to Chemical Analysis and Life Sciences (TE339)

Synopsis

A broad overview to chemical analysis and life science, the instrumentation used and the common challenges faced in this area.

Part I: What is Chemical Analysis?
Part II: Life science
Part III: Biological analysis
Part IV: Compare and contrast analytical instruments most commonly used in chemical analysis and life sciences
Part V: Discussion on instrumentation improvements
Part VI: Inherent issues with analysis and what the future holds
Part VII: Pharma and Life Science Industry

What You Will Learn

• What constitutes an analysis?
• What are the principles behind most analytical instrumentation?
• What are the common components for analysis in life science? What is a gene? What is a protein? What is a metabolite?
• The difference and commonality between chemical and life science analysis.
• Instrumentation and its challenges.
• Pharma and life science industry specific challenges.

Who Should Attend

Broad audience from various industries who need to have conceptual understanding of the various terms and technologies of the chemical analysis and life science industries. Example could be executives and managers who need to appreciate the subject in order to make better decision in their tactical and strategic execution.

 

Prerequisite

Strong interest in this area and desire to acquire better conceptual understanding in this area.  Re-collection of science subjects from secondary school days is helpful.

Course MethodologyLecture, simple hands-on exercise, discussion.

Course Duration

1 day, 9am - 5pm

Course StructurePart I: What is Chemical Analysis? (1.5 hours)
Why analyse?
What is an analysis?
[Exercise to unravel the principle of analysis]
What is the basis of different types of analytical equipment?
How do we identify which is which?
How do we tally?
Quantification by inference

Part II: Life science (0.5 hour)
What is life science?
How can this be segmented for bioanalysis?
Concept of biological uniqueness.
What is the % difference within and between species? Eg human and orang-utan

Part III: Biological analysis (0.5 hour)
Key components of biological analysis
How detection and separation techniques in biological analysis differ markedly to that of chemical analysis?
Exploiting this knowledge for biological uniqueness
Importance of human genome project and similar projects

Part IV: Compare and contrast analytical instruments most commonly used in chemical analysis and life sciences (1.0 hour)
a) High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)
• Principle of separation
• Explain detection
• How throughput and accuracy has been improved
b) Polymerase chain reaction thermal cycler (PCR)
• Principle of separation
• Explain detection
• How throughput and accuracy has been improved

Part V: Discussion on instrumentation improvements (1 hour)
Move on to hybrids.

Part VI: Inherent issues with analysis and what the future holds (1 hour)
• Small samples --- importance?
• Identification --- reference standard libraries
• Flexibility of system vs Efficiency. Different mindset.
• User perspective --- easy sample preparation very important

Part VII: Pharma and Life Science Industry (0.5 hour)
• Concept of regulatory
• Concept of pharmacopeia
• Arrival of biosimilars
• Importance of Bioequivalence trials by 2012
• Post genomics era