HPLC After 50 Years: How It’s Evolved and What’s Next

Saying his career has paralleled the rise of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) since first taking courses on the topic in the early 1970s, Michael Dong, principal consultant of MWD Consulting in Norwalk, Connecticut, USA discussed select developments in the technique and its columns in a lecture at the Eastern Analytical Symposium & Exposition 2023 (EAS) on Tuesday, November 14 in Plainsboro, New Jersey, USA.

Analyst is working in laboratory with connecting HPLC column to the HPLC system before install to column oven, concept of qc laboratory in pharmaceutical industry . | Image Credit: © Sukjai Photo - stock.adobe.com

As the title of his talk, “Innovations in HPLC Columns: Perspectives from a Pharmaceutical Scientist,” would indicate, Dong’s history in pharmaceuticals has given him a unique view to the evolution of HPLC—particularly its interconnectivity with his longtime line of work, which he noted with a mix of gravitas and humor.

“If one day HPLC is gone, the drug industry would just come to a halt,” Dong said.

Dong took several moments to recognize the scientists who spearheaded key advancements in each of four areas: reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RPLC) that assists assay reproducibility, using high-purity silica to reduce peak tailing and batch-to-batch column reproducibility, superficially porous particles (SPP) that increase column efficiency, and hybrids (including charged surface) that enhance pH range.

Of course, as Dong pointed out, all of these are specifications within one particular technique—which can sometimes complicate things.

“It would be nice if you had one method that worked for everything in the world,” he said.

Following Dong, and making it a point to say he was not going to talk about HPLC history, Szabolcs Fekete of Waters Corporation in Geneva, Switzerland gave a lecture on “Innovations in HPLC Column Technology for Faster and More Efficient Separations of Large Biomolecules.”

In Fekete’s talk, it was the length of the chromatographic column, rather than its various compositions, that was the focus. For macromolecule analysis, he said, because only a very short inlet segment retains large solutes effectively, columns of perhaps only a few centimeters, or shorter, can be appropriate.

Depending on what is being analyzed, then, an “effective column length” can be determined, and not one size fits all.

References

(1) Dong, M. Innovations in HPLC Columns: Perspectives from a Pharmaceutical Scientist. Presented at the Eastern Analytical Symposium & Exposition 2023, Plainsboro, New Jersey, November 14, 2023.

(2) Fekete, S. Innovations in HPLC Column Technology for Faster and More Efficient Separations of Large Biomolecules. Presented at the Eastern Analytical Symposium & Exposition 2023, Plainsboro, New Jersey, November 14, 2023.