The LCGC Blog: A Weighty Problem with Calibration
August 6th 2018Chromatographic methods often require that the analyte response is calibrated (and validated) over a wide concentration range when the analyte concentration in the sample is either unknown or is expected to vary widely. Bioanalysis, environmental, and clinical applications are just a few examples of where this may be the case.
The LCGC Blog: Multipath Liquid Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry: A Veritable Pandora’s Box
August 1st 2018For several years, our group has been working on a concept that we have termed multipath liquid chromatography (LC). The main idea is to target multiple classes of compounds following a single injection of a sample, the components of which are segregated on-line and directed to separate appropriate paths for simultaneous separation; the streams are then recombined for detection. I believe that this approach would be powerful for biomarker quantitation, where it would be more informative to track both metabolite and protein biomarkers to better define a disease state, or in the case of antibody–drug conjugate (ADC) development, where the metabolism of the ADC might involve understanding both the levels of the released drug and the remaining protein.
Ten Common-Sense Corollaries in Pharmaceutical Analysis by High Performance Liquid Chromatography
August 1st 2018This instalment describes ten corollaries in high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and pharmaceutical analysis that most practitioners are likely aware of but may overlook the rationales behind them.
The Vital Role of Blanks in Sample Preparation
August 1st 2018Too often, analysts follow prescribed methods, including the processing of “blanks”, without fully understanding the rationale behind the various steps. This month we’ll look at the types of blanks used in an analytical procedure and why they are used. We will focus on those defined by U.S. regulatory agencies.
Advancing Health and Disease Research with Efficient Analytical Methods
August 1st 2018Biological and health research often involves the analysis of highly complex classes of similar compounds that are difficult to distinguish. Analytical methods that can distinguish between similar forms give researchers more power, while methods that can separate related classes in a single run save time. Guowang Xu, the Director of the CAS Key Laboratory of Separation Science for Analytical Chemistry at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has been developing methods that can do both, and using those approaches to advance research on a variety of compounds, such as acyl-coenzyme A, acylcarnitines, and a wide range of metabolites and lipids. He recently spoke to us about some of this work.