Sample Preparation

Phenomenex, Inc. (Torrance, California), a leader in the chromatography and separation sciences business, has been named to Deloitte's Technology Fast 50 Program for Los Angeles.

Gilson, Inc. (Middleton, Wisconsin), an industry leader in purification systems for high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), solid phase extraction (SPE), and gel permetation chromatography (GPC) clean-up, now offers direct support and sales in the United States.

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., a leader in the separation sciences and chromatography industries, announces the launch of its enhanced partner program. The program is designed to support the expansion of the companies' informatics activity via its partners around the globe, the world class program will utilize business partners to better meet customer needs in multiple industries. Thermo Scientific?s informatics offerings include laboratory information management systems, chromatography data systems, and spectroscopy software.

The determination of the carcinogenic food processing contaminant furan by headspace sampling of foods is challenging because it can easily escape from the sample during preparation. Furan can also be easily formed as a by-product when the sample is heated in the headspace apparatus. This article describes a number of approaches to overcome these difficulties and alternative methods to quantify furan in a variety of matrices.

HPLC 2007 was held in Ghent, Belgium in June. Last month, columnist Ron Majors summarized some the important column developments as well as other Symposium highlights. This month, he winds up coverage with additional highlights in the areas of technology and applications. Among the topics covered are stationary phase preparation and characterization, multi-dimensional and comprehensive LC, temperature studies, detectors and an application overview.

The Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy, an event that features the newest applications and technologies in the chromatography industry, have announced the 2008 Pittsburgh Conference Memorial National College Grants (PCMNCG) Program.

Ronald E. Majors, LCGC North America columnist and Senior Chemist for the Columns and Supplies Division of Agilent Technologies, Inc., has been awarded the 2007 Martin Gold Medal by the Chromatographic Society in the United Kingdom for outstanding contributions to the chromatography field.

Waters Corporation (Milford, Massachusetts) and Lambda Therapeutic Research Ltd (Mumbai, India) recently announced a joint cooperative agreement that provides innovative analytical laboratory equipment designed to enhance research quality service and business solutions for Lambda and its clients.

Demonstrating the increasing mainstream popularity of chromatography and separation science in general, Encyclopedia Brittanica has added ?sample preparation? to its immense catalog of scientific terms.

Strategic Directions International, Inc. (Los Angeles, California), recently released the results of a comprehensive study of the sample prep market in North America.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Massachusetts) have developed a new sample preparation technique for proteomics research.

In a recent article published in the Journal of Proteomic Research, a group of researchers reported a new two-dimensional liquid chromatography (2D LC) protocol for the preparation and analysis of rat neuropeptides.

In a recent issue of Nature Nanotechnology, a group of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Massachusetts) have created a microchip system capable of speeding up the separation and sorting of biomolecules such as proteins.

Triclosan is an ubiquitous antibacterial, antimicrobial chemical found in numerous consumer health care products today. This article demonstrates that triclosan can be quantitatively determined in commercial hand soaps using reversed-phase solid-phase disk extraction coupled to quantification using capillary gas chromatography-atomic emission detection while avoiding emulsions.

Flash chromatography was first introduced by W.C. Still in 1978. The following report published in the June 2006 issue of LCGC North America provided a good overview of the technique.

Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) are synthetic polymeric materials that mimic immunosorbents. They are widely used as sorbents for solid-phase extraction (SPE). The most common way to synthesize them is bulk polymerization because of its simplicity and versatility. This produces a hard monolith that has to be ground and sieved to obtain particles in the desired size range. However, the partial loss of the materials as fine dusts; the irregular shape of the particles produced and their wide size distribution, have led to a search for different polymerization methods to offset the drawbacks of the bulk polymerization process.

This month's Technology Forum looks at the topic of Sample Prep and the trends and issues surrounding it. Joining us for this discussion is LCGC columnist Ron Majors of Agilent Technologies, Willam Ciccone of Mircosolv Technology Corporation, and and Yibai Chen of Fox Chase Cancer Research Center.

The laboratory life science and analytical instrument industry is comprised of a large, diverse group of organizations that manufacture and distribute their products worldwide. However, overall industry sales are concentrated among a small set of companies. Approximately 950 firms are included in the industry, but only about 100 companies have sales above $50 million.

The major advantages of preparative supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) include separation speed; the ability to achieve chiral separations; lower viscosity of the mobile phases, which allows high flow rates with acceptable pressure drops and results in higher productivity; reduction of solvent use of as much as 90% compared with liquid chromatography; and ease of processing collected sample fractions.

Optimizing peak shape in capillary gas chromatography (GC) is essential for the consistent, accurate analysis of residual solvents in pharmaceutical compounds.

Analysis by mass spectrometry (MS) of integral membrane proteins and those associated with membrane is an important aspect of proteomics.

This month's installment of "Sample Prep Perspectives" describes a new extraction technique called QuEChERS (standing for quick, easy, cheap, effective, and safe and is pronounced "catchers") for the sample preparation of pesticides in foods and agricultural samples.

This month's installment of "Column Watch" is the conclusion of a two-part series in which columnist Ron Majors examines trends in column and sample prep introductions at Pittcon 2007.

This month's installment of "Column Watch" is the first of a two-part series in which Ron Majors examines the trends and highlights in columns and consumables at Pittcon 2007.

Modern Liquid Chromatography was the hot topic of the day in a standing room only technical session on the third day of Pittcon 2007. Arranged by Peter W Carr (University of Minnesota) and Stephen G Weber (University of Pittsburgh), the session's favorite subject seemed to be high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).