Chemical detective work could be the solution to stolen and repackaged medicine

Medicines have a unique chemical fingerprint, according to a new study from the University of Copenhagen. Researchers say this knowledge can be used to trace counterfeit or stolen medicine.

University of Copenhagen

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426,016. That’s how many packages of illegal medicines EU agencies confiscated during an eight-month operation in 2024. During the operation, they managed to find counterfeit medicines worth 11.1 million euros. And it’s an increasingly bigger problem. “Pharmaceutical crime is a growing threat in the EU,” Europol stated earlier this year.

Fortunately, a new weapon against pharmaceutical counterfeiting may be on the way. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen and Stanford University have shown in a new study that it is possible to distinguish seemingly identical medicines at the molecular level – both across manufacturers in different countries and even from the same manufacturer.

The specific study examines the approved drug ibuprofen, but the underlying technology can be used to trace the origin of all types of medicine, according to the researchers.

“All medicines have a unique chemical fingerprint that allows identification down to the specific factory where it was produced,” says Else Holmfred, Postdoc at the Department of Pharmacy at the University of Copenhagen and Stanford University, and lead author of the new study. She adds:

“Imagine a pharmaceutical company has a shipment of medicine stolen, which was discarded due to insufficient quality. Later, some criminals repackage the medicine with the intent to resell it. With this technology, it’s possible to accurately determine where the medicine originally came from and thereby prove it was stolen.”

How plants grow leaves unique traces

In the study, researchers focus on variants of chemical elements – so-called isotopes – when identifying medicines and their origin: isotopes of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen.

“Stable isotopes are incredibly useful because they don’t change over thousands or millions of years. And since all medicines are made from synthesized organic substances or substances derived from plants, they always contain something organic and thus carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. This could be, for example, corn starch or cellulose,” says Stefan Stürup, Associate Professor at the Department of Pharmacy and co-author of the study.

The substances used in medicine are all produced under unique conditions, which affects their isotopic signature.

“The isotopic composition of a plant substance is determined by where in the world it comes from, what type of water it used, and what type of photosynthesis it performs. Depending on this, the ratio between carbon-12 and carbon-13 changes slightly. This ratio is unique to each plant. That’s why it’s impossible to fake isotopes,” says Stefan Stürup.

Proving specific counterfeits

The next step in the research is to demonstrate that specific counterfeits can be found. Else Holmfred is investigating this in an upcoming study.

“The follow-up study hasn’t been published yet, but I’m currently working with data where we can clearly see examples of counterfeit medicines. We can see that the counterfeit medicine has a significantly different isotopic signature than the medicine from the manufacturer. The tablets look almost identical, so it’s hard to document that they’re counterfeit unless you can chemically prove they’re different,” she says.

Such analyses of medicines are also relatively easy to implement. It just requires the right equipment.

“If you have a suitable laboratory and want to analyze 50 samples, it takes about 24 hours,” says Else Holmfred.

Read the study “Revealing the Stable δ2H, δ13C, and δ18O Isotopic Patterns of Ibuprofen Drug Products and Commonly Used Pharmaceutical Excipients.”

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Journal

Molecular Pharmaceutics

DOI

10.1021/acs.molpharmaceut.5c00522 

Article Title

Revealing the Stable δ2H, δ13C, and δ18O Isotopic Patterns of Ibuprofen Drug Products and Commonly Used Pharmaceutical Excipients

 

Light up our love: Medaka courtship dynamics observed

Environmental conditions affect reproduction times in model fish

Osaka Metropolitan University

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Mating patterns of Japanese rice fish witnessed in the lab.

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Credit: Osaka Metropolitan University

Japanese rice fish, known as medaka, are small, easy to breed, and reproduce daily, making them widely used as model organisms around the world. Until now, medaka research has mainly occurred in labs where environmental conditions and study observations are easily controlled. Unnatural environmental settings such as these bring into question the accuracy of previous behavioral findings. Therefore, this study is important for answering the fundamental question of whether the behavior of animals observed in laboratories is the same as in their natural environments.

A research team led by Specially Appointed Assistant Professor Yuki Kondo and Professor Satoshi Awata at Osaka Metropolitan University’s Graduate School of Science examined medaka reproductive behavior based on behavioral rhythms and environmental factors. Through 24-hour observations using infrared cameras and a laboratory light-dark cycle from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., the researchers discovered medaka reproductive behavior begins in the dark period around 7 a.m. and peaks at 8 a.m.

“Previous studies may have overlooked behavioral and physiological changes that occur at night because they were conducted during daylight hours. This discovery will lead to a review of the experimental conditions for medaka as a model organism and demonstrate the importance of the natural ecology of organisms,” stated Dr. Kondo. 

Further, video data revealed that 89% of reproductive behavior occurred after lights on, and overall behavior was similar to that observed in the wild. However, the peak of courtship and reproductive behavior was confirmed to be 3 to 4 hours later than in a natural environment.

“In the future, it will be necessary to investigate the reasons for the differences in reproduction times and courtship behavior in the wild and the laboratory. By introducing a system that gradually adjusts the lights and the temperature between night and day, it is possible to conduct research under conditions closer to the natural environment of medaka, thereby gaining more ecologically accurate findings in the laboratory,” stated Professor Awata.

Competing interests 

The authors declare no competing interests.

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About OMU  

Established in Osaka as one of the largest public universities in Japan, Osaka Metropolitan University is committed to shaping the future of society through “Convergence of Knowledge” and the promotion of world-class research. For more research news, visit https://www.omu.ac.jp/en/ and follow us on social media: X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. 

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Journal

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-025-11082-y 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Temporal dynamics of courtship and spawning in medaka under laboratory conditions revealed by 24 h video monitoring

Article Publication Date

7-Aug-2025

Dopamine assists female flies eager to mate in enhancing their sensitivity to sounds

Nagoya University

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Dopamine signals enhance the responsiveness of auditory sensory neurons in Johnston's organs of unmated female fruit flies, making them sensitive to sounds, including courtship songs from males.

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Credit: Issey Takahashi

Many animals, including humans, can flexibly modulate their responsiveness to sounds according to different situations. This ability allows them to optimize the use of their limited brain resources by prioritizing the processing of critical information at any given moment.

In line with this idea, a research team at Nagoya University in Japan has demonstrated that when female fruit flies are eager to mate, dopaminergic signals can influence their sensitivity to sounds, including courtship sounds from males, which are an essential source of information for species reproduction.

"We believe that this finding is the first step toward understanding the neural mechanisms that underlie the universal property of flexible auditory response modulation in animals," said lead author Azusa Kamikouchi, professor of the Graduate School of Science and the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules at Nagoya University. Their finding was published in the journal iScience.

Mating status is known to influence responses to courtship sounds in animals; however, the neural mechanisms underlying this status-dependent modulation have not been well understood.

Professor Kamikouchi, PhD student Haruna Yamakoshi, and their colleagues at Nagoya University conducted a study to clarify the neural mechanisms, using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism. Drosophila is used extensively in neuroscience research due to its simple brain, many useful genetic tools, and short generation time.

Drosophila males produce courtship sounds by wing vibrations to attract females. Females listen to the sound to decide whether to accept the male's courtship. It has been reported that female receptivity to mating is high when they have no mating experience and low when they do. Based on this report, the research group hypothesized that female responses to male courtship songs may be modulated depending on their mating experience.

To explore the validity of their hypothesis, researchers initially focused on neurons in Johnston's organs (JOs) located in the second antennal segment of fruit flies, where they detect sound signals. They examined which neurotransmitter receptors are expressed in JO neurons, using a single-nucleus RNA-seq database.

The researchers found that three types of dopamine receptors are abundantly expressed in JO neurons. To verify whether dopamine signals affect the responsiveness of JO neurons, they suppressed the expression of dopamine receptors in Drosophila females and measured their neural responses to courtship sounds, using calcium imaging.

Results showed that neural responses to the sounds decreased in unmated females, whose mating drive is high. On the other hand, neural responses did not decrease in mated females and young females that had just emerged from their pupae, whose mating drive is low.

Researchers also observed behavioral responses to courtship sounds in unmated Drosophila females with suppressed dopamine receptor expression. They measured the time it took for the females to initiate mating, a key indicator of the increase in mating drive. As expected, the females with suppressed dopamine receptor expression reacted less to the courtship sounds, suggesting that these sounds were less effective in triggering their mating behavior under those conditions.

"We found that dopamine is one of the factors involved in flexible auditory modulation," said Kamikouchi. "Previous studies have reported that the properties of the auditory system change depending on the situation in various animals, including humans, mice, and frogs. This study suggests that a common mechanism across species may underlie this type of auditory modulation."

These findings are expected to provide a better understanding of the remarkably flexible sound information processing systems in animals.

Publication:
The study, "Mating status-dependent dopaminergic modulation of auditory sensory neurons in Drosophila," was published in the journal iScience on July 29, 2025, at DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.113232.

Funding:
This study was supported by MEXT KAKENHI Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) (Grant JP20H03355 to AK), Grant-in-Aid for Transformative Research Areas (A) “iPlasticity” (Grant JP23H04228 to AK), Hierarchical Bio-Navigation (Grant JP22H05650 to RT), Materia-Mind (Grant JP24H02200 to AK), and Dynamic Brain (Grant JP25H02496 to AK), Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (Grant JP24KJ1282 to HY), The Graduate Program of Transformative Chem-Bio Research, Nagoya University, Japan (to HY), and JST FOREST (Grant JPMJFR2147 to AK), Japan.
 

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Journal

iScience

DOI

10.1016/j.isci.2025.113232 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Mating status-dependent dopaminergic modulation of auditory sensory neurons in Drosophila

 

New study reveals how ancient groundwater is linked to past ice sheets and sea-level changes

Stockholm University

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Instruments for the analyses of radiocarbon content in fluids from marine sediments.  Wei-Li Hong, Dr. Nai-Chen Chen and Sophie ten Hietbrink.

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Credit: Sophie ten Hietbrink

A recent study in Nature Geoscience offers important new insights into the hidden role of ancient groundwater beneath the ocean floor – and how it may have interacted with ice sheets and rising sea levels during past climate changes.

Groundwater is a vital source of fresh water, supplying nearly half of global domestic needs. But a large portion of this water – between 42 per cent and 85 per cent – is actually fossil groundwater, which flowed into the ground more than 11,700 years ago, before the start of the current geological period known as the Holocene. This ancient groundwater is not only difficult to replenish, but also increasingly vulnerable to modern pollution or salinization through seawater mixing. To protect this vital resource, it is important to understand how long it stays underground and how it moves and changes over time.

“In regions once covered by vast ice sheets and glaciers, fossil groundwater may have been shaped by dramatic changes in sea level and the movement of massive ice bodies”, says Wei-Li Hong, Department of Geological Sciences at Stockholm University and one of the researchers behind the study. 

“There are some studies that suggest that this deep groundwater flow could help destabilize ice sheets or accelerate their melting. However, these areas are difficult to reach, so there has been very little direct evidence from the field to support these ideas – until now”, he continues.

In a new study in Nature Geoscience, led by PhD student Sophie ten Hietbrink and her supervisor Wei-Li Hong, both from the Department of Geological Sciences, Stockholm University, researchers used a new method to investigate this question. Instead of drilling directly beneath glaciers, they looked at how ancient groundwater flows into the ocean – an indication that the water likely came from glacial melt thousands of years ago.

Working with scientists from Norway, Poland, and Germany, the team collected fluid samples from the seafloor off the northern Norwegian coast, at the Lofoten-Vesterålen margin. At a water depth of 760 meters below sea level, the researchers documented freshened groundwater emerging from the seabed – a strong indication that it originated from glacial processes potentially dating back thousands of years.

“By analysing radiocarbon content of the fossil groundwater, a temporal marker for its last atmospheric contact, we were able to provide precise time constraints on the groundwater flow”, says Sophie ten Hietbrink, PhD student at The department of Geological Sciences, Stockholm University.

“We found that the fossil groundwater changed its composition after the retreat of the Fennoscandian ice sheet. When this region was covered by a thick, one-kilometre-high glacier, meltwater from the ice filled underground spaces. After the ice sheet collapsed and sea levels rose, this fresh groundwater was gradually replaced by seawater”, she continues.

The study provides, for the first time, a detailed timeline showing how fossil groundwater flowed into the ocean and how it was influenced by glacial changes – even tens of kilometres offshore. The findings not only confirm when the groundwater composition changed, but also show that once the glacier stopped supplying fresh meltwater, the remaining groundwater quickly became vulnerable to mixing with seawater. These results have wide-reaching implications, for understanding glacier stability, the researchers say, as well as understanding the supply of nutrients, the health of marine ecosystems, and how much carbon the coastal ocean can absorb.

“This work is especially important for today’s warming climate, as many glaciers in Greenland, Antarctica, and Svalbard are already retreating. Continued research into submarine groundwater systems in these regions will help scientists better understand how ice sheets and groundwater interact in the future”, says Wei-Li Hong.

Read more:

Find the study, “Deglaciation drove seawater infiltration and slowed submarine groundwater discharge”, published in Nature Geoscience: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-025-01750-z
DOI: 10.1038/s41561-025-01750-z

More about the search for freshwater beneath the seafloor during the IODP³-NSF Expedition 501 New England Shelf Hydrogeology 2025
Chasing freshened groundwater beneath the seafloor: https://www.su.se/english/news/chasing-freshened-groundwater-beneath-the-seafloor-1.830408 

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The manipulator arm of the remote operated vehicle Ægir 6000, taking sediment cores at Lofoten-Vesterålen margin where fossil groundwater was detected. The white batches on the seafloor are bacteria mats using nutrients transported with the groundwater.

Credit

NORCRUST (Norwegian margin fluid systems and methane-derived carbonate crusts)

Sophie ten Hietbrink attended a research cruise to the Svalbard for the investigation of fossil groundwater in the fjords.

Credit

Dr. Arunima Sen, UNIS

Journal

Nature Geoscience

DOI

10.1038/s41561-025-01750-z 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Deglaciation drove seawater infiltration and slowed submarine groundwater discharge

Article Publication Date

6-Aug-2025

 

EU organic label: Better when it says “organic” 4

Study of the University of Bonn shows a clear signal builds more trust and increases purchase intention

University of Bonn

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the EU's original organic label. Below: two modifications made by the research team to clarify the message. The study shows that this significantly increases the clarity of the label's message. 

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Credit: Source: EU/STRENGTH2FOOD/Gregor Hübl/University of Bonn

To positively influence purchase decisions, sustainability labels must convey a clear signal rather than remain abstract. Using the EU’s “Green Leaf” organic logo as an example, researchers from the universities of Bonn, Newcastle (UK) and Corvinus (Hungary) demonstrate that simple design tweaks reduce consumers’ uncertainty, bolster their trust in the products, and thus increase their willingness to buy. The two‑study-paper appears in the journal "Agribusiness" and is already available online.

Labels for sustainable foods—such as organic, fair‑trade or animal‑welfare certifications—are meant to assure consumers that products meet specific social and environmental standards. “Many labels fail to do so because they either don’t attract attention, aren’t clear enough, or even cause confusion,” says Prof. Dr. Monika Hartmann, head of the Department of Agricultural and Food Market Research at the University of Bonn.

One case in point is the EU’s organic logo, known as the “Green Leaf.” Introduced in 2010 to create a unified European market for certified organic products, it is mandatory unlike national organic labels. Yet a 2024 survey found that only 56 percent of EU citizens recognize the EU organic label—and just 45 percent know it signifies compliance with EU organic standards.

Study in seven countries: Do design changes clarify the message?

Together researchers from the Universities of Bonn, Newcastle and Corvinus tested whether minor design changes could strengthen the label’s message and effect. They added “BIO” or “ECO” (depending on language) inside the green, star‑bordered leaf, and in a second variant also appended “EU‑certified.” Three groups—with a total of 9,500 respondents across seven EU countries—saw either the original logo or one of the modified versions. Participants rated each logo for clarity, trustworthiness, and usefulness in making an informed choice.

The result: in every country, both modified labels were judged clearer, more understandable, more trustworthy, and more helpful than the original logo. “Interestingly, adding ‘EU‑certified’ had no extra effect,” says Hartmann. “Apparently, the original logo mainly lacks the unmistakable signal that it denotes organic.”

Study in Germany: What drives these perceptions?

In a second study of about 500 German participants, the researchers investigated the mechanisms behind the enhanced appeal of the modified labels. They asked additional questions about clarity, uncertainty, trust, and behavioral intentions. “We showed that signal clarity rose dramatically,” explains Hartmann, who is also a member of the University of Bonn’s Transdisciplinary Research Area (TRA) “Sustainable Futures.” “Almost 90 percent of respondents clearly identified the logo augmented with ‘BIO’ or ‘ECO’ as an organic mark—versus under 70 percent for the original EU logo.” The new label also significantly reduced uncertainty and increased trust. There was no direct significant effect of label modification on purchase intention; however, the results reveal a significant indirect effect, mediated by reduced uncertainty and increased trust.

A low‑effort, high‑impact intervention

From these findings, the researchers conclude that labels for sustainably produced goods must be clearly recognizable to aid consumer decision‑making. If they are not, modifying a label to enhance its clarity offers a comparatively simple and cost‑effective way to encourage sustainable purchasing.

Participating Institutions and Funding

The study involved the University of Bonn, Newcastle University in England, and Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary. It was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme.

Publication: Monika Hartmann, Ching-Hua Yeh, Matthew Gorton, Barbara Tocco, Áron Török: “Enhancing Sustainability Label Effectiveness Through Logo Design Modification: An Analysis of the EU Green Leaf Logo”. Agribusiness, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1002/agr.70013

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Journal

Agribusiness

DOI

10.1002/agr.70013 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Enhancing Sustainability Label Effectiveness Through Logo Design Modification: An Analysis of the EU Green Leaf Logo