Dr Harparkash Kaur

Harparkash is the director of the LSHTM Bioanalytical facility and the lead investigator of the drug quality project(www.actconsortium.org/drugquality).

Harparkash set up the bio analytical laboratory at LSHTM. As an analyst she devised high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) based methods applicable to varying fields of research such as determining the levels of free radicals in disease state and levels of endogenous antioxidants. Her present research has involved developing / validating HPLC and simple chemical methods to test the quality as well as levels of drugs in patient samples and measuring the levels of insecticids on treated nets and indoor residual spraying that are used as the major mode of intervention in the fight against malaria.

The field friendly methods that she has devised for the detection of artemisnin derivatives and for the detection of insecticides have separate granted patents held by the LSHTM. The focus of her work is to determine the quality of drugs, levels of antimalarial drugs on filter paper adsorbed blood samples and amounts of insecticides on bed nets from a number of trials ongoing/planned in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her recent work has expanded to determinining the quality of antibiotics, antihypertensive and antiretroviral medicines purchased in various states within Ghana and Nigeria.