Meeting Review: Advances in Microcolumn and Related Separation Technologies
Special Issues
The first meeting in The Chromatographic Society’s diamond anniversary year brought together world‑renowned speakers alongside past presidents of the Society, delegates from academia and industry, and scientific instrument and technology companies at the Institute of Engineering and Technology in central London on 22 March 2016. The presentations included discussions on liquid chromatography (LC), supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC), and gas chromatography (GC) from both an academic and industrial perspective - providing excellent insight into the state-of-the-art in these techniques for the delegates.
Paul Ferguson, President, The Chromatographic Society, UK.
The first meeting in The Chromatographic Society’s diamond anniversary year brought together worldârenowned speakers alongside past presidents of the Society, delegates from academia and industry, and scientific instrument and technology companies at the Institute of Engineering and Technology in central London on 22 March 2016. The presentations included discussions on liquid chromatography (LC), supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC), and gas chromatography (GC) from both an academic and industrial perspective - providing excellent insight into the state-of-the-art in these techniques for the delegates.
The Chromatographic Society’s Advances in Microcolumn and Related Separation Technologies was held at the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) on a beautiful Spring day in Savoy Place, in London, UK, overlooking the River Thames. There were over 130 attendees registered for the meeting including 14 vendor companies (including the principal meeting sponsors Agilent Technologies, Shimadzu, and Waters) presenting the latest from their product portfolios - all making for a vibrant atmosphere.
Some highlights included Ian Wilson’s presentation of high throughput ultrahigh-pressure liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (UHPLC–MS) metabolic profiling; an insightful discussion on approaches for the analysis of thermally unstable analytes by gas chromatography (GC) by Pat Sandra; the diverse application of supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) and SFC–MS - particularly of drugs of abuse in sports science - by Jean-Luc Veuthey; and a review of comprehensive multidimensional LC by Peter Schoenmakers, including his group’s work in 3D chromatography for separation of complex peptide samples. This work on 3D-LC is a major endeavour that the group is undertaking and comes under the acronym, STAMP (separation techniques for a million peaks).
One interesting aspect of Peter Schoenmakers presentation was his thoughts on the 10 most important breakthroughs in separation science in the last 60 years.
Other speakers included David McCalley, Frederic Lynen, Tom Lynch, Peter Myers, Guy Wilson, and Kevin van Geem.
As part of our celebrations, we would be interested in finding out what readers believe are the most important breakthroughs in separation science in the lifetime of The Chromatographic Society. Our proposals are listed in Table 1 and more information for our reasoning may be found on The Chromatographic Society website (www.chromsoc.com).
To this end we are conducting a short on-line poll to ascertain your views, which can be accessed through this link: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/T7LBXTQ. We will publish the result early next year in LCGC’s The Column and on the ChromSoc website. Please take two minutes to share your views. There is an “other” option where you can suggest an alternative if you don’t agree with what’s on our Top 10 list.
Paul Ferguson is the President of The Chromatographic Society.
AI and GenAI Applications to Help Optimize Purification and Yield of Antibodies From Plasma
October 31st 2024Deriving antibodies from plasma products involves several steps, typically starting from the collection of plasma and ending with the purification of the desired antibodies. These are: plasma collection; plasma pooling; fractionation; antibody purification; concentration and formulation; quality control; and packaging and storage. This process results in a purified antibody product that can be used for therapeutic purposes, diagnostic tests, or research. Each step is critical to ensure the safety, efficacy, and quality of the final product. Applications of AI/GenAI in many of these steps can significantly help in the optimization of purification and yield of the desired antibodies. Some specific use-cases are: selecting and optimizing plasma units for optimized plasma pooling; GenAI solution for enterprise search on internal knowledge portal; analysing and optimizing production batch profitability, inventory, yields; monitoring production batch key performance indicators for outlier identification; monitoring production equipment to predict maintenance events; and reducing quality control laboratory testing turnaround time.
