Liquid Chromatography (LC/HPLC)

Good morning and welcome to LCGC's third and final day of conference coverage from Pittcon 2007.

Well-known LCGC Columnists John Dolan and John Hinshaw provide their list of recommended sessions.

Good morning, fellow Pittcon conferees, and welcome to Day 2 of LCGC North America's ongoing coverage from Pittcon 2007.

Chromatography Forum of Delaware Valley Dal Nogare Award Dr. John W. Dolan was the proud recipient of the Dal Nogare Award at Pittcon 2007, adding another bright note to his illustrious career.

The 2007 Ralph N. Adams Award in Bioanalytical Chemistry was presented to Norman J. Dovichi, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Washington, on Monday afternoon at Pittcon 2007.

Attendees continue to trickle in, as snowstorms around the country continue to disrupt air travel. For those like me who thought, "Chicago in February? Hooray!"

Yesterday, Andrew Tiplerwas going nowhere fast because of airport delays. Today, he was discussing how to accelerate your gas chromatography runs.

Shana Kelley received the Pittsburgh Conference Achievement Award in a ceremony on Monday morning of Pittcon 2007.

Eight presentations on a variety of LC-MS applications were given in Session 170 on this first afternoon at Pittcon. One of the most interesting was session 170-6, "Techniques of LC-MS in Forensics Analysis." The speaker, Michael C. Zumwalt, discussed the variety of LC-MS instrumentation available to meet both qualitative and quantitative needs. Among the interesting applications he discussed were those for detecting drugs of abuse and explosives. Workplace drug testing and forensic toxicology are examples of these applications. LC-MS continues to be a rapidly growing technique, and the ways in which it can be used in forensic analysis are quite varied. Serial measurement systems are used for quantitation, while parallel systems are best for qualitative applications. Serial systems such as single quadrupole and triple quadrupole mass spectrometers are very useful for detecting drugs of abuse in oral fluids. A particular advantage noted by the speaker is the ease of sample collection, which can even be done in the field, for example, by a police officer.

Well-known LCGC Columnists John Dolan and John Hinshaw provide their list of recommended sessions.

Most arrived at Pittcon 2007 wet, cold, and frustrated. But a the blizzard whooping around Chicago couldn't bring David Schwartz down today when he was presented with the 2007 Pittcon Heritage Award.

As most of us traveled by air to Chicago this weekend, we all passed through airport security and the various drills like taking off our shoes, removing metal objects and taking the all-important laptop out of its case.

Sunday afternoon's plenary lecture at Pittcon 2007 was given by Charles M. Lieber and was titled "Nanowire Nanoelectric Devices for Detection of and Interfacing to Biological Systems."

Pittcon 2007 opened with a bang here in Chicago, albeit a snowy bang. All the liquid falling outside, whether in rain, snow, or ice form, was nothing compared to the liquid chromatography sessions.

Good morning, and welcome to the opening day of LCGC's "Meeting Report" from Pittcon 2007 in Chicago, Illinois.

Separation instrument techniques are among the most widely used technologies in the analytical instrumentation market. It spans the entire industrial and regional marketplace. The lab separations market includes chromatographic techniques like analytical and preparative HPLC, GC, IC, TLC, flash, and low pressure LC.

Each month in our Technology Forum we will feature a discussion between industry experts on various trends and issues in the chromatography field. This month's Technology Forum looks at the topic of Pittcon 2007 and the trends and issues surrounding it. Joining us for this discussion are Tom Ricci with Ricci Communications and LCGC Columnists John Dolan and John Hinshaw.

According to "Column Watch" Editor Ron Majors, Type C silica is a term introduced by Dr. Joseph Pesek of San Jose State University (California).

John Dolan considers some techniques to improve detection limits, no matter what the application is.

This month's installment of "MS - The Practical Art" reprises a talk from Chris Lipinski that examines the analytical road ahead in drug discovery and the quest to expand the chemistry landscape and its inherent analytical demands.

HPLC is among the most dynamic markets in the laboratory analytical and life science instrument industry. The market can be segmented into six different categories, which include conventional HPLC, capillary/nano LC, fast LC, preparative HPLC, amino acid analyzers, and gel permeation chromatography systems. Conventional HPLC systems, which account for the majority of the market, are standard HPLC instruments with typical flow rates between 1–10 mL/min. However, other HPLC systems designed for specific applications and that remedy some of the shortcomings of conventional LC systems, are becoming more significant in the market.

The concept of membrane-controlled processes is widespread in nature. Nearly all biological mechanisms concerning mass transport and exchange are regulated by membrane barriers and a variety of technical and biotechnological applications have been devised based on this mechanism. Membrane applications in analytical chemistry are geared towards the enrichment of target substances from an aqueous solution or the separation of compounds from a complex matrix. This article describes membrane-assisted extraction processes to separate traces of polar pharmaceutical substances the so called emerging micropollutants from aqueous samples. Basic prospects and examples of membrane-supported extractions are presented.

Excess variability is not acceptable in a pharmaceutical method.

This article gives an overview of the performance of a previously developed system for the ranking of C18 reversed-phase columns applied to different pharmaceutical analyses. The separation of eight different drug substances from their respective impurities was studied. The chromatographic procedure for acetylsalicylic acid, clindamycin hydrochloride, buflomedil hydrochloride, chloramphenicol sodium succinate, phenoxymethylpenicillin and nimesulide was performed according to the corresponding European Pharmacopoeia monograph. The separations of dihydrostreptomycin sulphate and vancomycin were performed according to literature. It was found that that the column ranking system is a helpful tool in the selection of suitable columns in these analyses.

Through the years, Pittcon has provided a platform for leading researchers to present new breakthroughs in their scientific endeavors.

Beginning in February, Steve Brown, LCGC technical editor of 18 years, will answer your technical questions. Each month, one question will be selected to appear in this space, so we welcome your submissions. Please send all questions to the attention of "Ask the Editor" at lcgcedit@lcgcmag.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

Regis Technologies, Inc. partners with pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and other companies to help expedite drugs to market by providing synthesis and separations services. Regis Technologies announced today it has added Supercritical Fluid Chromatography (SFC) to its separations services and will offer GMP separations April 1, 2007.

In any field there are often "misconceptions" or "myths" that are perpetuated and passed on to the next generation. These myths are often driven by a lack of understanding by practitioners of the real issues. In this instalment of "Column Watch", the 10 most popular myths around high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) column technology will be demystified by discussing the issues at hand. Among some of the popular myths that will be dispelled are that "All C18 (L1) columns are the same", "You can't reverse an HPLC column", "High temperature always leads to better separations" and "The higher the carbon load the better the reversed-phase column".

This article describes and compares a number of approaches to increase the speed of liquid chromatographic separations. On a standard LC column, a gain of a factor two in the run time (from 10 to 5 minutes) was achieved by increasing the flow-rate two-fold. On a monolithic column, a column operated at high temperature (120 ?C) and a short column, flow-rates could be increased typically five-fold, resulting in run times in the order of 2 minutes. This was accompanied by a sometimes considerable loss in separation efficiency. A combination of a very short run time and unaffected separation efficiency was realized on a UPLC system, designed for use at higher pressure. By working at approximately 800 bar, the analytes could be well separated within 30 seconds.