The Column-03-07-2013

Solid-phase extraction (SPE) has been commercially available for nearly 25 years and is still finding new applications. Growth of this technique appears to be largely a function of the vendors' capability to provide specific application support, especially in clinical sciences, pharmaceuticals, toxicology, pesticides and residues analysis.

In a random study of drugs from 713 pharmacies from 19 countries, 9.1% of anti-tuberculosis drugs analysed failed basic quality control testing using thin layer chromatography (TLC) for the required level of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), according to a recent study published in the International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.

Lisa Witte, vice-president/general manager of Thermo Fisher Scientific's portable analytical instruments business (Massachusetts, USA), has received a Women in Manufacturing STEP (Science, Technology, Engineering and Production) award from the Manufacturing Institute/Deloitte, the University of Phoenix and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers.

Pittcon will be held in Philadelphia for the first time this year. Philadelphia is the centre of one of the top life science clusters in the USA, bringing together the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical devices, R&D and a wide range of other supporting industries.

Analytical Pixels Technology (APIX) (Grenoble, France) has teamed up with research organisations, CEA–Leti (Grenoble, France) and Caltech (California, USA).

Mary Wirth, the W. Brooks Fortune Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Purdue University, Indiana, USA, discusses her groundbreaking work involving protein column efficiency.

Quantitative proteomics aims to provide large-scale qualitative and quantitative data about every protein in a biological sample. However, drawbacks associated with current techniques can make it difficult to generate the data required. Research scientists have recently developed a new approach that allows highly multiplexed high-resolution MRM quantitation of most of the detectable proteins in a sample in a single analysis.