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Looking back, the start of my penning of blog articles matches quite well with the start of efforts to investigate the potential environmental impacts of unconventional oil and gas extraction, and the formation of the Collaborative Laboratories for Environmental Analysis and Remediation (CLEAR; http://clear.uta.edu) at the University of Texas Arlington. It also well coincided with my effort to begin some outside consulting activities, predominantly the review of forensics evidence for blood alcohol determination. Both of these activities have blossomed considerably in the past seven years, and it has become interesting to contemplate the most rewarding way to spend my time going forward.

Supplemental tables

Click the title above to open the LCGC North America January 2020 issue, Volume 38, Number 1, in an interactive PDF format.

We return to the important topic of buffers, this time focusing on what happens when there is a mismatch between the mobile-phase buffer pH and the pH that the sample is buffered at.

Advanced separation and mass spectrometry methods enable comprehensive profiling of the inherent glycan heterogeneities of protein therapeutics. In particular, reversed-phase HPLC–based multiattribute methods (MAMs) provide a wealth of information, and other techniques, such as HILIC and CE-MS, also continue to evolve.

Drug substance development requires a complex range of analytical methods, presenting a challenge to analytical chemists to reliably transfer and execute these fit-for-purpose methods to external manufacturing sites. Here, we provide guidelines to follow, and share examples of realworld problems and the strategies used to remedy them.

What concentration of aqueous buffer should I use in the mobile phase when developing a re-versed‑phase liquid chromatography (LC) method for the analysis of ionogenic compounds?

I have edited the “GC Connections” column in LCGC for over 32 years. In that time, gas chromatography (GC) has changed from a specialized separations technique to being more routine for standardized methods, while expanding outward to complex multidimensional separations and scaling downward towards miniaturization and portability. In my last “GC Connections” article before stepping away from the role of Editor, I give some perspective on how GC has changed and grown over the years, and where it might go in the future.

Size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) is a mainstay in the biopharmaceutical industry, serving as a gold standard analytical tool for the characterization of therapeutic proteins in development and manufacturing settings. Contemporary SEC separations can be performed using columns packed with sub-2-μm particles, and these platforms offer the highest efficiencies available for the separation of monoclonal antibody monomer species from low- and high-molecular-weight product-related impurities. Compared to other chromatographic modes used to characterize proteins, SEC is unique in that analytes are not retained by the stationary phase. As a result, special care is required to achieve in practice the chromatographic efficiency that is expected in theory. In this article, we describe the fundamental aspects of achieving high performance using sub-2-μm SEC columns. In addition, we discuss trends in the biopharmaceutical industry, including challenges that can be addressed using modern size-exclusion technologies.

A new technique, ice concentration linked with extractive stirrer (ICECLES), provides highly efficient isolation of trace compounds from aqueous samples. ICECLES combines freeze concentration with stir-bar sorptive extraction into a seamless analytical extraction methodology. This month, we discuss how to perform this relatively simple technique, and discuss its advantages and limitations.

Chicago, Illinois, USA, will host the 71st annual Pittcon conference and exposition. Thousands of separation scientists from across the globe and from a wide spectrum of industries will gather at the McCormick Place convention centre to discuss, investigate, and assess the latest scientific advances in technology and instrumentation.

Click the title above to open LCGC Europe Supplement December 2019, Volume 32, Number 12, in an interactive PDF format.

Click the title above to open The Column December 2019 Europe & Asia issue, Volume 15, Number 12, in an interactive PDF format.

Click the title above to open The Column December 2019 North American issue, Volume 15, Number 12, in an interactive PDF format.

The Eastern Analytical Symposium (EAS) Award for Outstanding Achievements in Chemometrics was presented to Peter de Boves Harrington on Tuesday 19 November.

Selected highlights of innovative chromatography products.

Researchers from the University of Leipzig have used gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) to study the fertility cues of non-human primates.

The Eastern Analytical Symposium (EAS) Award for Outstanding Achievements in the Fields of Analytical Chemistry was presented to Joel M. Harris at EAS 2019 on Wednesday 20 November.

LCGC is proud to announce that Daniel W. Armstrong and Szabolcs Fekete are the winners of the 13th annual LCGC Lifetime Achievement and Emerging Leader in Chromatography Awards, respectively.

Thermo Fisher Scientific has announced a collaboration with Owlstone Medical to advance the early diagnosis of cancer and other diseases utilizing novel biomarkers and non-invasive breath sampling.

What does a best-in-class laboratory workplace look like?

I’ve been dealing recently with issues in the laboratory when using ammonium acetate buffers, including surprising rises in HPLC–MS back pressures when starting the instrument after overnight storage, as well as difficulties with MS sensitivity.

To fully characterize a protein biopharmaceutical, it must be broken down into smaller segments (peptides). Several high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) techniques can be used to provide a wealth of information on everything from post-translational modifications (PTMs) to the glycoprofile to information on similarity when characterizing biosimilars.

I run into scientists all the time who have never heard the term exposome. Most are not intimately connected in the analytical world; these days, analytical scientists seemingly expect “ome” and “omics” to be tacked onto pretty much anything.

Click the title above to open the LCGC Europe December 2019 regular issue, Volume 32, Number 12, in an interactive PDF format.