New test dissolves threat of fake drugs

Fake news can be tricky to spot, but spotting fake drugs just got a little easier. Researchers have devised a low-cost way to help distinguish legitimate medications from counterfeit ones.

By counting the particles formed when a pill dissolves in a water-filled cup, the team's device can identify fake medications. (William Grover/UCR)

The World Health Organization estimates that 1 in 10 medications ranging from cancer treatment to contraceptives are either fake or otherwise "substandard." Though this primarily affects the developing world, there are also gray markets for weight-loss or anti-aging drugs in the U.S.

"Watered-down or illicit versions of drugs like Botox or popular GLP-1 inhibitors have caused serious injuries or death," said William Grover, associate bioengineering professor at the University of California, Riverside.

In response to this problem, Grover's laboratory has developed a fake drug detector that could be manufactured for under $30, and potentially for as little as $5. Open-source plans to build the device are detailed in a new paper in the journal Analytical Chemistry.

At its core is a low-cost infrared sensor made for use in toy robots able to follow lines drawn on paper. The researchers repurposed the sensors to instead track the rate at which pills dissolve in water.

All pills of a given drug dissolve - or should dissolve - at roughly the same rate. Legitimate medications don't necessarily dissolve any faster or slower than counterfeit ones. But they were made by different people at different facilities and with different ingredients, so their dissolution rates form a "fingerprint" that makes them identifiable and different from that of a fake drug.

"The theory here is that if it's a legitimate medicine, the manufacturer made every pill identical enough that they'll all behave roughly the same way when they dissolve," Grover explained. "So if you test a suspect pill, and it dissolves at a different rate than the real thing, this suggests the suspect pill is counterfeit."

Montage of drugs tested in the Grover lab. (William Grover/UCR)

While others have used dissolution rates to determine a medication's legitimacy, Grover's laboratory made the tests more sophisticated by creating an electronic device that converts a pill's dissolution into a digital signature that they call a "disintegration fingerprint."

After designing the device, the researchers sought to create a library of these fingerprints that could be used to identify a suspect pill. The group tested over 30 different medications ranging from antibiotics and vitamin supplements to prescription opioids and over-the-counter painkillers. They found that 90% of these pills could be correctly identified using the fingerprinting method.

The group also tested whether their technique could distinguish name-brand and generic versions of the same drug.

"We took Bayer aspirin pills and drug-store-brand aspirin - these are basically identical medicines with the same active ingredient and very similar inactive ingredients," Grover said, "but when ran through our tests, we could easily tell the difference between the two products."

The research team even recruited their friends and family to collect samples of drug products from across the U.S. and Canada. They found that pills of the same product typically have similar disintegration fingerprints regardless of where they were purchased. However, some manufacturers make slightly different versions of products for different countries and fingerprinting successfully distinguished U.S. and Canadian versions of a product.

Though there are high-quality pharmaceuticals widely available in the U.S., the CDC warns that there is a public health risk for people ordering what they believe to be prescription medications from disreputable online pharmacies. These medications are frequently found to be fakes.

Other times, a medication could contain irregularities because of manufacturing mistakes. "A facility could get a drum of mislabeled ingredients that can get incorporated into the medicine," Grover said. "But even an honest error can lead to death."

In the future, Grover would like to use this method to detect fake antimalarial drugs. These are drugs that treat malaria, a major cause of death in many tropical regions. Malaria is treatable with the right medications.

"Unfortunately, bad actors know they can make money preying on the need for antimalarials. They sell pills that have the same packaging as authentic antimalarials, but don't contain the active ingredients," Grover said. "If someone gives these pills to their child, they won't cure their infection."

Grover hopes to get his tool into the hands of those who can use it to fight fake antimalarials and other fake drugs.

"I can't imagine a more despicable person than someone who would sell fake medicine to a child. I hope our work makes those criminals' lives a little harder."

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