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The 2018 Uwe D. Neue Award in Separation Science was presented to Christopher Pohl of Thermo Fisher Scientific (Sunnyvale, California) during the opening plenary session on Sunday, July 29, at HPLC 2018 in Washington, D.C.

For several years, our group has been working on a concept that we have termed multipath liquid chromatography (LC). The main idea is to target multiple classes of compounds following a single injection of a sample, the components of which are segregated on-line and directed to separate appropriate paths for simultaneous separation; the streams are then recombined for detection. I believe that this approach would be powerful for biomarker quantitation, where it would be more informative to track both metabolite and protein biomarkers to better define a disease state, or in the case of antibody–drug conjugate (ADC) development, where the metabolism of the ADC might involve understanding both the levels of the released drug and the remaining protein.

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Too often, analysts follow prescribed methods, including the processing of “blanks”, without fully understanding the rationale behind the various steps. This month we’ll look at the types of blanks used in an analytical procedure and why they are used. We will focus on those defined by U.S. regulatory agencies.

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SFC 2018

SFC 2018, the 12th annual instalment in this series, will take place on 17–19 October 2018, in Strasbourg, France, at the Palace of Music and Congress.

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Biological and health research often involves the analysis of highly complex classes of similar compounds that are difficult to distinguish. Analytical methods that can distinguish between similar forms give research­ers more power, while methods that can separate related classes in a single run save time. Guowang Xu, the Director of the CAS Key Laboratory of Separation Sci­ence for Analytical Chemistry at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has been developing methods that can do both, and using those approaches to advance research on a variety of compounds, such as acyl-coenzyme A, acylcarnitines, and a wide range of metabolites and lipids. He recently spoke to us about some of this work.

The tutorial sessions at HPLC 2018 are part of the conference’s educational mission. The sessions consist of presentations given by experts on various topics, with more background provided than might be presented in a typical 20-minute talk.

This afternoon session begins at 1:30 p.m. with a keynote lecture titled “In-vivo SPME with Matrix Compatible Coatings Coupled to LC–MS and Directly to MS,” presented by Janusz Pawliszyn of the University of Waterloo (Waterloo, Canada).

This morning session, which begins at 11:15 a.m., kicks off with a talk by Luis Colon of the State University of New York at Buffalo, on aminophenyl-derived phases on superficially porous silica particles.

This morning session, which is chaired by X. Chris Lee of the University of Alberta, Canada, and starts at 8:30 a.m., will explore advances in high performance liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry for various aspects of environmental analysis, including new work being done by researchers in North America and Asia.

The most commonly applied detector in gel permeation chromatography/size-exclusion chromatography (GPC/SEC) is the differential refractive index detector, RI. How UV–vis detection, if applicable, adds true value to GPC/SEC applications is discussed in this instalment of Tips & Tricks.

Splitless injections are sometimes necessary for trace analyses, where the analyst hopes to recover 100% of the analytes that are injected. Unfortunately, splitless injections can be challenging and using an imperfect method can lead to loss of analytes and poor peak shapes. The choice of inlet liner can have an impact on the data and one must consider the effects of geometry, packing, deactivation, and volume on introduction of analytes into the system. Other important inlet parameters to consider include inlet temperature, splitless hold time, and initial oven temperature.

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The key differences between a classical balance and currently available automated systems from the good weighing practice (GWP) perspective and within the scope of ISO9001:2015 quality standard are discussed. The systems under review are: (i) manual analytical balances; (ii) semi‑automatic systems; (iii) fully automatic systems; and (iv) integrated systems that use on-line coupling of the analytical balance with the instrument used for analytical measurements. The parameters defined in GWP guidelines, such as accuracy, uncertainty, minimum weight, and risks (including out‑of‑specification results), will be evaluated for all of these systems.