LCGC Interviews

Discovering and identifying molecular biomarkers in large LC–MS data sets requires automation without loss of accuracy. Benjamin Van Mooy from the Wood Hole Oceanographic Institution reveals a lipidomics strategy using LOBSTAHS to identify lipid, oxidized lipid, and oxylipin biomarkers in high mass accuracy HPLC– MS data.

Biopharmaceutical purification techniques can be slow and cumbersome with poor scalability. A new device using laterally-fed membrane chromatography (LFMC) was developed to address these issues. Raja Ghosh from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, spoke to The Column about this new device and its potential applications.

Babies and infants experience rapid growth within a short timeframe and the nutrition that they absorb is therefore of the utmost importance. María Mateos-Vivas from the Department of Analytical Chemistry, Nutrition, and Food Science at the University of Salamanca, Spain, has used hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) to investigate the role of nucleotides on infant health. She recently spoke to us about this research.

The future of biological and clinical research will depend on technological innovations and cross discipline co-operation as science seeks a deeper understanding of increasingly complex biological systems. The 2016 recipient of the AES Mid-Career Award, Amy Herr, and her team at the University of California Berkeley have explored these areas using a combination of chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering with strong foundations in biology, material science, and analytical chemistry to innovate new microfluidic analytical technology. She recently spoke to LCGC about this work.

Ira Lurie describes the role of supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) in forensic analysis and why the technique has not become a recognized technique for the analysis of seized drugs.

Water contamination has come to the forefront of global debate as a result of high profile cases such as those in Flint, Michigan, USA or the pollution of the Ganges River in India. Koji Kosaka of the National Institute of Public Health, Japan, has investigated the contamination of the Yodo River Basin in Japan, with the precursors of the carcinogen N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA). He recently spoke to LCGC about his use of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to uncover the source of contamination and the chemical precursors responsible.

Wine can be a very complex matrix to analyze. LCGC spoke to Alexandre Pons from Seguin-Moreau in Cognac, France, about his work analyzing volatile compounds in wine and why gas chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (GC–MS–MS) is his method of choice.

Debby Mangelings, the winner of the 2016 LCGC Emerging Leader in Chromatography award, is an associate professor in the Department of Analytical Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, in Brussels, Belgium. Mangelings’s work has focused primarily on chiral separations. Mangelings recently spoke to LCGC about her scientific background, interests, and recent work.

Ice cores contain an abundance of information about climate and the changes it is undergoing. Brett Paull and Estrella Sanz Rodriguez from the Australian Centre for Research on Separation Science (ACROSS) at the University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia, spoke to Kate Mosford of The Column about their work on the analysis of Antarctic ice cores and the important role of capillary ion chromatography (cap-IC) in this area of research.

Milton L. Lee is best known for his achievements in capillary separation techniques (emphasis on column technology and instrumentation), his entrepreneurial activities in scientific instrument companies, and his tenure as a chemistry professor for almost 40 years at Brigham Young University (BYU), where he has held the position of H. Tracy Hall Professor of Chemistry from 1985 to the present. Lee recently spoke to LCGC about his career and work.

Subcritical water chromatography (SBWC) is seen as an increasingly enticing prospect to replace high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) in industrial settings because of its low costs and environmental impact. Yu Yang of East Carolina University, in Greenville, North Carolina, USA, has conducted research into this process for two decades. He recently spoke to LCGC about his work, why companies should consider SBWC, and its role in pharmaceutical analysis.

Gas chromatography–atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (GC–APCI) offers increased limits of sensitivity in food analysis. Carlos Sales Martinez from the Research Institute of Pesticides and Water in the University Jaume I, Castellón, Spain, has been exploring the novelty of this technique for the analysis of food samples. He recently spoke to LCGC about this work.

Contaminants in surface water and drinking water supplies arising from pharmaceutical and personal care product use as well as other compound sources pose a difficult challenge for analytical chemists. Thomas Letzel from the Technical University of Munich in Germany spoke to LCGC to discuss collaborative research taking place in Europe to address contaminants of emerging concern in water analysis.

High performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC) offers many advantages over conventional separation techniques when applied to complex samples. The Column interviewed Gertrud Morlock from Justus Liebig University Giessen in Germany, on her current research, which involves hyphenating HPTLC with multiple analytical techniques.

Michael Dong offers advice on using UHPLC for method development in pharmaceutical analysis and the important distinction between method conversion and method transfer.

Populations worldwide are exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that can be harmful to human health. The Column spoke to David Megson from Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, about recent developments in assessing human exposure to PCBs and chiral enantiomer fractions (EFs) in the workplace.

Foodomics can help to investigate and solve crucial topics in food science and nutrition from a short- and long-term perspective. LCGC spoke to Alejandro Cifuentes from the Laboratory of Foodomics at the Institute of Food Science Research (CIAL), National Research Council of Spain (CSIC) in Madrid, Spain, about the fundamental importance of foodomics and where the field of food analysis is heading.

Preventing environmental contaminants from getting in to the food chain is of paramount importance to us all. Yelena Sapozhnikova, a Research Chemist at the Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in Wyndmoor, PA, USA, spoke to The Column about her research into the development and evaluation of analytical methods for persistent and emerging organic chemical contaminants in food samples.

Marine polychaetes are a common type of annelid worm widely spread in marine environments. Raquel Fernandez from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, spoke to Aladair Matheson of The Column about her innovative approach to developing an untargeted method to monitor polychaetes and assess their potential use in environmental monitoring of oil spills.

The Kendrick mass defect combined with liquid chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC–QTOF-MS) can offer a variety of benefits to analysts investigating groundwater contamination. The Column spoke to Thomas Borch from Colorado State University in Colorado, USA, about his work in this area to find out more.

There is a growing demand in the pharmaceutical industry for fast and selective separation methods to monitor drug behaviour in small-volume biological samples. David S. Hage from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, USA, has recently developed a series of methods using affinity chromatography and related techniques for this purpose. LCGC interviewed him on this work.

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) pose an on-going threat to human health, but are often trapped within environmental samples, thereby making analysis challenging. Bethany Degg of The Column spoke to Lourdes Ramos from the Department of Instrumental Analysis and Environmental Chemistry Institute of Organic Chemistry of the CSIC (Madrid, Spain) about her innovative research on new sample preparation methods for POPs.

Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada are collaborating with clinicians at Toronto General Hospital to develop preclinical and clinical applications of solid-phase microextraction (SPME). Bethany Degg of The Column spoke to Barbara Bojko from the team to find out more.

Preventing environmental contaminants from getting in to the food chain is of paramount importance to us all. Yelena Sapozhnikova, a Research Chemist at the Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in Wyndmoor, PA, USA, spoke to LCGC about her research into the development and evaluation of analytical methods for persistent and emerging organic chemical contaminants in food samples.

In developing countries, access to medicine is often limited. To make matters worse, widespread counterfeiting often means that even when patients get access to drugs, the drugs are of poor quality. Dr. Mélisande Bernard, of the Agence Générale des Equipements et Produits de Santé, the technical and pharmaceutical service of the public hospital system of Paris, France (Assistance Publique–Hôpitaux de Paris), is helping to address this problem by developing chromatographic methods to detect substandard cardiovascular drugs in Africa. She recently spoke to us about this work.

Jonathan V. Sweedler, a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois, and the 2015 ANACHEM Award winner, has focused his group’s major research efforts on analytical neurochemistry, developing new measurement tools to characterize small-volume samples for their cell–cell signaling molecules, and applying these technologies to the study of the distribution and dynamic release of neuropeptides, classical transmitters, and other cell–cell signaling molecules from the brain.

Caroline West, the winner of the 2015 LCGC Emerging Leader in Chromatography award, has a diverse set of scientific interests-in high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC), hydrophilic-interaction chromatography (HILIC), and enantioselective separations-but all are primarily focused on the fundamentals of chromatographic selectivity.

Bryan Vining from SGS Environmental Service (Wilmington, North Carolina, USA) reveals some of the cutting-edge research his team has performed involving dioxin analysis, and proposes some future possibilities for the direction of this field.

The biopharmaceutical industry continues to expand in response to a demand for novel biopharmaceuticals. José Paulo Mota from the Faculty of Science and Engineering (FCT-UNL) of Universidade Nova de Lisboa and the Institute of Experimental and Technological Biology (IBET), Portugal, has been working on the development of chromatographic techniques to speed up the purification of biopharmaceuticals, specifically adenoviruses. Bethany Degg of The Column spoke to him about his work.