Interview: Edward Sisco on Analytical Science and the Illicit Drug Supply

Overview

Edward Sisco describes research to generate timely, comprehensive chemical data on the illicit drug supply for public health, public safety, and policy partners. He reports that his team’s workflows can deliver information about substances, concentrations, locations, and origins in hours rather than weeks or months, and identifies point-of-need measurement and next-generation chemometrics as emerging analytical-science trends.

Background

Edward Sisco’s research focuses on developing approaches that provide real-time, comprehensive insights into the illicit drug supply for public health, public safety, and policy partners. He says the drug landscape, particularly in North America, is changing rapidly, while traditional data-gathering organizations may struggle to keep pace and may not capture its full complexity. His team applies analytical tools to identify substances and concentrations, determine where they occur and originated, and predict where they may move next.

Data Highlights

Key Findings

• Sisco’s research aims to provide real-time, comprehensive insights into the illicit drug supply for public health, public safety, and policy partners.
• His team applies analytical tools to identify substances and concentrations, where they occur and originated, and where they may move next.
• Sisco reports that the team can provide partners with these data in hours rather than weeks or months.
• He anticipates advances in point-of-need chemical measurement as instrumentation becomes smaller without sacrificing performance, and in chemometrics that extract and contextualize more information from measurements.
• For forensic drug analysis, Sisco describes objective interpretation and standardized methods across laboratories as important to enable comparisons of synthesis, batches, trafficking routes, and potential harm.
• Sisco identifies limited staffing and budgets, costly instrumentation and consumables, and administrative demands as challenges that reduce time for focused research and collaboration. He also argues that researchers should be willing to start over when an approach is not working.

Clinical Implications

The interview describes analytical approaches intended to provide timely information about the illicit drug supply to public health, public safety, and policy partners. Sisco also recounts how chemical measurements shared with partners can prompt conversations about substance use, potential risks, and strategies to stay safe. The interview does not specify a clinical protocol or treatment recommendation.

Conclusion

Sisco’s interview focuses on timely chemical characterization of the illicit drug supply, point-of-need measurement, and chemometric methods that make measurements more informative and contextualized. He also discusses the value of standardized methods, the need for time and collaboration in research, and the importance of being willing to start over when an approach is not working.

Related Resources & Content

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