Liquid Chromatography (LC/HPLC)

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., (San Jose, CA) has launched a program focused on assisting government and commercial food testing laboratories in the development and implementation of methods for the analysis of melamine in food products imported from China.

This month's "LC Troubleshooting" installment will take a look at the design of these durable pumps and also examine some of the potential weaknesses and how to overcome them.

This installation of "Validation Viewpoint" describes how statistically rigorous quality-by-design (QbD) principles can be put into practice to accelerate each phase of liquid chromatography (LC) instrument method development.

The 47th Eastern Analytical Symposium and Exposition presented its award for Outstanding Achievements in Separation Science to Professor Pat J. Sandra, of Ghent University, Belgium, on November 18, 2008.

All the buzz lately about LC columns packed with particles smaller than 3 mm often comes with warnings about extracolumn effects. This month's installment will take a look at what these effects are and more.

Celebrations for JASCO's 50th anniversary in the analytical instrumentation market will conclude with Jasco Europe, a subsidiary of Jasco Corporation, moving into its new facilities in Cremella, Italy in November 2008.

Varian Inc. (Walnut Creek, CA) and Flora Research Laboratories (Grants Pass, OR) have formed an alliance to advance the understanding and implementation of LC-MS solutions for complex dietary supplement analysis.

A research group from the University of Lisbon (Lisbon, Portugal) studied the use of stir-bar sorptive extraction (SBSE) with polyurethane and polydimethylsiloxane polymeric phases and high performance liquid chromatography with diode-array detection for the analysis of six acidic pharmaceutical compounds in environmental water matrices such as river, sea, and wastewater samples.

The David H. Murdock Research Institute (Kannapolis, NC) announced that Waters (Milford, MA) will be the primary supplier of analytical science solutions, including mass spectrometers, liquid chromatographs, and associated scientific data management software.

The combination of reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC), atmospheric pressure ionization (API), mass spectrometry (MS) and tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) is ideal for determining and characterizing analytes in complex biological matrices. This review looks at the importance of parameters such as hydrophobicity, ionization properties, molecular mass and, partially, the molecular structure resulting from applied LC–MS–MS systems in analytical laboratories. The use of these parameters to investigate biomolecules and their unambiguous identification is also described.

Phenomenex, Inc., (Torrance, California) has been named one of the 15 best small workplaces in the U.S. by the Wall Street Journal.

Pittcon and Wiley-Blackwell announced that they will produce four webinars in 2008-2009 to kickoff  the new "Wiley-Blackwell/Pittcon Webinar Series."

Research by scientists from University College London (UCL) and Tel Aviv University shows that the tuberculosis infection is 3,000 years older than was previously imagined and that TB in people evolved before bovine TB.

This "LC Troubleshooting" installment marks the beginning of the 26th year that John Dolan has written this column.

A variety of chromatographic sorbents are commercially available for reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RPLC) and while many of these columns are nominally similar, in practice the columns may provide significantly different separations.

The Laura data management system from LabLogic Systems (Sheffield, UK) now includes an interface for control of the Acquity UPLC system from Waters Corporation (Milford, Massachusetts).

Researchers at Beijing Normal University and the Institute of Beijing Criminal Science and Technology (China) used ion pairing high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to analyze 12 black inks and six red inks from various manufacturers in a number of countries.

ESA Biosciences, a Magellan Biosciences company (Chelmsford, Massachusetts), announced that it has received the 2008 Frost and Sullivan North American Technology Innovation Award in the field of integrated metabolomics systems.

Proxeon (Denmark) has announced it has integrated the software for its liquid chromatography platform with Thermo Fisher Scientific?s (San Jose, CA) mass spectrometry data-management system.

Thermo Fisher Scientific (San Jose, CA.) has announced that its Atlas Chromatography Data System now supports Microsoft Windows Vista operating system.

Very short columns filled with 1.9 µm particles were evaluated for the ultra-fast analysis of pharmaceutical formulations. Local anæsthetic, mydriatic and anti-hypertensive agents were chosen as analytes and a method was developed and validated for each of these substances, according to ICH guidelines. Excellent quantitative performance was obtained using an optimized chromatographic system that reduces the importance of extra-column effects and cuts the analysis time to less than 15 s.

Microemulsion liquid chromatography (MELC) is a recent development offering reduced sample preparation times for complex samples and generic separation conditions applicable to a wide range of solutes. This article introduces the concepts of MELC and discusses the possible benefits and future applications.

The 9th Csaba Horváth Medal Award Symposium, to be held on April 28-29, 2009 at the Hartford Convention Center (Hartford, Connecticut), announced they are accepting papers for oral and poster presentations on the topics of Advances in Separation Technologies, Multidimensional Separations, UPLC, LC-MS, Biomarkers, and Separation of Enantiomers.

Researchers from Edificio Anexo Marie Curie (Cordoba, Spain) used coacervates of decanoic acid reverse micelles to extract priority carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in waste and surface water for subsequent analysis by liquid chromatography-fluorimetry.

SACHEM (Austin, Texas) has launched a new HPLC e-Learning program.

The move from conventional particle sizes (5 μm or higher) to smaller diameter packing materials is one of the most attractive approaches to achieve higher separating efficiency. Recently developed 3 μm polysaccharide-derived chiral stationary phases demonstrate characteristics of favourable mass transfer kinetics, high column efficiency and good column permeability. This allows the fast analysis of enantiomers using conventional HPLC instruments.

Ron Majors continues his summary of the technical highlights of HPLC 2008, discussing more hot topics from the show.

John Dolan regularly receive e-mails from readers with a wide variety of questions. As he cleans out his inbox, he chooses a few of these to share.

Penn State researchers have discovered that pesticide build-up could lead to poor honey bee health. The researchers analyzed pollen, brood, adult bees, and wax samples. The results show unprecedented levels of fluvalinate and coumaphos - pesticides used in the hives to combat varroa mites - in all comb and foundation wax samples. They also found lower levels of 70 other pesticides and metabolites of those pesticides in pollen and bees.

A group of researchers at the University of Nevada-Reno (Reno, Nevada), led by Dr. Jimi Francis, conducted a study, "Comparative Analysis of Nutrients in Baby Milk Using Varied Milk Delivery Systems." The study measured the level of nutrient loss using HPLC methods during simulated baby bottle feedings and has found that some bottle types resulted in significant loss of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) during a typical 20-min feeding.