Diamond synchrotron helps preserve ancient warship

As reported in Spectroscopy Europe 17/6 (2005), synchrotron radiation has been used to help determine the best preservation strategies for the Tudor warship, the Mary Rose. Now researchers are using one of the beamlines at the new Diamond synchrotron, Didcot, UK, to investigate how sulphur and iron compounds are distributed in individual wood cells. This is hoped to complete the scientists' understanding of the complex interactions between the iron, sulphur and wood cell walls. The I18 beamline being used is the microfocus spectroscopy beamline, which currently provides 2.5 μm² spatial resolution but it is hoped to reduce this to the 1μm design specification once monochromator instabilities have been addressed. www.diamond.ac.uk, www.maryrose.org

NMR on a chip?

A miniature sensor developed at NIST in the USA can detect nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in small samples of fluids flowing through a novel microchip. The prototype chip device, developed in a collaboration between NIST and the University of California, may have wide application as a sensitive chemical analyser, for example in rapid screening to find new drugs.

As described in Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. (doi: 10.1073/pnas.0711505105), the NMR chip detected magnetic signals from atomic nuclei in tap water flowing through a custom silicon chip that juxtaposes a tiny fluid channel and the NIST sensor. The Berkeley group recently codeveloped this "remote NMR" technique for tracking small volumes of fluid or gas flow inside soft materials such as biological tissue or porous rock, for possible applications in industrial processes and oil exploration.

Prototype microchip device combining NIST’s miniature atomic magnetometer with a fluid channel for studies of tiny samples. Credit: NIST.

The chip could be used in NMR spectroscopy, where its small size and high sensitivity make it possible to detect weak magnetic resonance signals from a small sample of atoms in the adjacent microchannel. Detection is most efficient when the sensor and sample are about the same size and located close together, lead author Micah Ledbetter says. Thus, when samples are minute, as in economical screening of many chemicals, a small sensor is crucial, Ledbetter says.

Plenty of growth for the spectroscopy market

A new report Spectrometers, Spectrophotometers and Spectrofluorometers: A Global Strategic Business Report published by Global Industry Analysts presents some interesting facts and projections about the market for spectroscopic instrumentation. The global market is projected to reach $10.5billion by 2010. Whilst it is no surprise that the areas of drug discovery and development, proteomics, metabolomics and genomics are highlighted and the use of mass spectrometry within them, the report recognises that developments in NIR and mid-IR are "gradually expanding use into novel applications", particularly medical and pharmaceutical. Research efforts on developing non-invasive NIR techniques to look at haemodynamics of tissue samples in vivo and at blood delivery for injured tissues are picked out.

Europe is the second largest market after the USA, but the economic expansion in Asian research and industrial markets "spell new opportunities for spectrometry". NMR is the fastest growing segment within the molecular spectroscopy market, although the report identifies that the US and European markets are nearly saturated and developing regions are "yet to witness rapid proliferation". www.strategyr.com

Raman developments

Scientists at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, UK, have developed an effective laser-based method for the non-destructive characterisation of the bulk chemical content of pharmaceutical capsules. In collaboration with Pfizer Ltd, the researchers in STFC's Lasers for Science Facility succeeded in quantifying the presence of the active pharmaceutical ingredient in production line relevant capsules to a relative error of 1%. Other established non-invasive methods were unable to reach the same level of accuracy with the same sample.

The technique holds great potential for a range of process control applications in the pharmaceutical industry. The results of the collaborative study are reported in the J. Pharm. Biomed. Anal. (doi: 10.1016/j.jpba.2008.01.013). The development stems from research into Spatially Offset Raman Spectroscopy, which is under development at STFC for a wide range of applications including the detection of explosives in non-metallic containers, the detection of counterfeit drugs through opaque packaging and the non-invasive diagnosis of bone disease and cancer [see Spectrosc. Europe 19(5), 7 (2007)]. The concepts, which are relatively simple to implement, were developed through experiments involving STFC's large scale facilities which provided crucial insight into photon transport processes.

The development is being carried out with STFC's knowledge technology transfer arm and the new techniques are planned for commercialisation through STFC's spin-out company LiteThru Ltd.

NMR identifies marker of bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder, or manic depression, is a debilitating psychiatric condition characterised by alternating mania and depression, and affects about one in every hundred people worldwide. Although it is known that the condition can be treated relatively effectively using the moodstabilising drugs lithium and valproic acid, the reasons why these treatments work are poorly understood.

The authors of a new study, from Imperial College London, the University of Cambridge in the UK and the National Institutes of Mental Health in the USA, hope that their research will enable a better understanding of the condition and of how it can be treated.

The researchers compared postmortem brain tissue samples of people with manic depression with those of age and gender matched controls. The samples were taken from the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which controls the processes involved in higher cognitive functioning. The researchers analysed these samples using NMR spectroscopy and found that people with manic depression had different concentrations of chemicals in this area of the brain than those without.

The researchers also used rat models to see the effects of lithium and valproic acid on the metabolite makeup of non-bipolar brain tissue. They found that these drugs caused the opposite chemical changes to those seen in the bipolar brain tissue samples. Chemicals that were increased in the bipolar brain tissue were decreased in rats given the mood stabilising drugs, and vice versa.

The researchers' findings lead them to believe that an upset in the balance of different neurotransmitters known as excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters, which are involved in sending signals in the brain, may be central to the disorder. The study also suggests that lithium and valproic acid work by restoring the balance of these neurotransmitters in the brain. The work was published in Molecular Psychiatry (doi: 10.1038/sj.mp.4002130).