Text and photos by the Institute of Herbal Medicine

Prof. Ivan Lawag, guest speaker and lecturer for the workshop, guides the participants during the activity.

The Institute of Herbal Medicine (IHM) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) held a hands-on workshop and lectures on “Validation and Optimization of HPTLC Quantification Experiments for Authentication” last Jan. 13, 2024, as part of their Balik-Scientist Free Webinar Series on “Ensuring Precision, Reliability, and Standardization: Validation and Optimization of HPTLC and Bioassays in Herbal Medicine.”

High-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC), a more efficient version of thin-layer chromatography (TLC), is a technique used to analyze compounds in a quantitative and qualitative manner. Validating and optimizing it requires systematic evaluation and refinement to ensure its accuracy, precision, specificity, sensitivity, and robustness for reliable analysis, typically involving adjustments to parameters like mobile phase composition, stationary phase selection, development conditions, and detection methods to achieve optimal separation and quantification of analytes in a sample.

The guest speaker and lecturer, Prof. Ivan Lawag, is an analytical chemist on HPTLC, a health researcher, scientific writer, editor, and reviewer, and is a bioassay and innovation expert. He is one of the Balik Scientists of the Philippine Council for Health Research and Development (PCHRD) and is currently an adjunct research fellow at the University of Western Australia. His work focuses on vitro assays evaluating antioxidant and antidiabetic activities, and therapeutic drug monitoring of anticancer drugs.#