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An introduction from the guest editor of this special supplement from LCGC Europe and LCGC North America revealing recent developments in high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and ultrahigh-pressure liquid chromatography (UHPLC).

In the 21st century, numerous advances have been made in liquid chromatography (LC) column technology. The best known are columns packed with sub-2-µm porous particles or sub-3-µm superficially particles, and monolithic columns. Another very novel and original development is micro-pillar array columns (µPAC). µPACs are produced by a lithographic etching process to create a perfectly ordered separation bed on a silicon chip. Although the performance in terms of efficiency has been illustrated, the applicability for analysis of real complex samples has yet to be fully demonstrated. This article illustrates that state‑of‑the‑art µPAC columns coated with octadecyl are applicable for a challenging application such as lipidomics. The performance is illustrated with the analysis of human blood plasma lipids.

Mixed-mode high performance liquid chromatography (MM-HPLC) involves the combined use of two (or more) retention mechanisms in a single chromatographic system. Many original stationary phases have been proposed in recent years with promising possibilities, while applications have only started to appear in the literature. In this review, the authors discuss mixed-mode chromatography stationary phases. An overview of applications using mixed-mode chromatography is described, as well as the increased interest in mixed-mode systems for two-dimensional chromatography.

Enantioselective high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is slowly adopting the modern particle technologies (sub-2-µm fully porous particles [FPPs] and sub-3-µm superficially porous silica particles [SPPs]) that have been well known in reversed-phase LC for the past decade. The most significant benefit is that enantiomer separations can be performed much faster, which is of interest in high-throughput screening applications and multidimensional enantioselective HPLC analysis. The state of the art is briefly discussed with some examples documenting the potential of core–shell particle technology and comprehensive multidimensional separations.

The aim of this article is to illustrate the current status of computer-assisted method development and retention modelling. This study focuses on the successful method development of typical small pharmaceutical compounds (impurity profiling) and large therapeutic proteins. By choosing appropriate initial conditions, the method development can be performed in less than one day. However, for small molecules possessing different physicochemical properties, the conditions can be multifarious, while for biopharmaceuticals (for example, monoclonal antibodies [mAbs], antibody–drug conjugates [ADCs]), a generic method can easily be developed. In addition to retention modelling and optimization, the potential of simulated robustness testing is also demonstrated. Depending on the applied retention model, the impact of any change among six experimental parameters (tG, T, pH, ternary composition, flow rate, and initial- and final mobile phase compositions) on the separation can be assessed using a 26 or 36 type virtual

Quality and consistency in reagents is critical to successful drug discovery and development. When targeting a particular protein of interest, in vitro experiments should be performed with proteins of biological properties similar to those for in vivo tests. It is important that molecularity, purity, shape, and degree of heterogeneity remain the same when any alterations are made to the model protein or the formulation buffer. Multi-angle light scattering (MALS) combined with size-exclusion chromatography (SEC-MALS) is a very useful technique to monitor the solution properties of the protein as changes to reagents are made.

Click the title above to open the LCGC Asia Pacific June 2017 regular issue, Vol 20, No 2, in an interactive PDF format.

Click the title above to open the LCGC Europe June 2017 regular issue, Vol 30, No 6, in an interactive PDF format.

Click the title above to open the LCGC Europe June 2017 supplement, Vol 30, No s6, in an interactive PDF format.

Click the title above to open the LCGC North America June 2017 regular issue, Vol 35 No 6, in an interactive PDF format.

MilliporeSigma (St. Louis, Missouri, USA) is now accepting entries for the Alfred R. Bader Award for Student Innovation.

A novel unit that integrates sampling and analysis for the determination of pest insect sexual pheromones in environmental air using fabric phase sorptive extraction (FPSE) and headspace gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (HSGC–MS) has been developed at the University of Córdoba in Spain.

Markes International has been awarded a European Product Design award for their recently re-designed “xr” series of thermal desorption (TD) products.

3M, the science-based technology company, has commissioned the National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training (NIBRT) to conduct in-depth research into their Emphaze AEX Hybrid Purifier, a single use plug and play filter matrix.

Agilent Technologies has awarded Dwight Stoll an Agilent Thought Leader Award in support of his research applying two‑dimensional liquid chromatography (2D‑LC) to biopharmaceutical analysis.

Incognito delves into some statistics on chromatography research, and is unsettled by what he finds.

An autosampler for a standard gas chromatography (GC) or GC–mass spectrometry (MS) system was adapted to perform simple static headspace sampling, instead of using a separate, and potentially more complicated, headspace sampling unit.

A preview of HPLC 2017, which will be held from 18 to 22 June 2017 at the Prague Congress Centre, Prague, Czech Republic.

Novel psychoactive substances pose a major challenge for forensic toxicology and drug-seizure laboratories because of the scale and speed at which these new “designer drugs” are entering the market. To keep pace with the threat, laboratories require robust full-scan detection techniques capable of both targeted drug screening and the identification of unexpected compounds too. Here, a full-scan gas chromatography (GC) coupled to high-resolution accurate mass (HRAM) approach for the profiling of known and unknown drugs of abuse is presented.

Click the title above to open The Column May 09, 2017 Europe & Asia issue, Volume 13, Number 7, in an interactive PDF format.

Click the title above to open The Column May 09, 2017 North American issue, Volume 13, Number 7, in an interactive PDF format.

I guess we have all had the issue at some time or other. A blank injection of eluent (or a zero volume dummy injection) gives rise to discreet peaks on the chromatographic baseline which may interfere with analyte peaks or increase the complexity of the chromatogram obtained, especially when performing trace analysis.chromatogram obtained, especially when performing trace analysis. Of course this is an undesirable situation and one which can be difficult to understand or troubleshoot as, if we didn’t inject anything, how on earth do we end up with discrete beaks in the blank chromatogram? The secret to understanding the phenomenon lies in understanding the mechanisms of gradient of HPLC.

This is the fifth article in a series exploring current topics in separation science that will be addressed at the HPLC 2017 conference in Prague, Czech Republic, from 18–22 June.