Celebrating 40 years of the Prep Conference: The International Symposium on Preparative and Process Chromatography

The first edition of the Prep Conference—The International Symposium on Preparative and Process Chromatography—was held in Washington, D.C. in 1985 and has provided a platform for academia, pharmaceutical professionals, and vendors of equipment and services, as well as a place to meet and present the latest developments in preparative chromatography for four decades.

This conference came about when the demand for higher-purity drugs was pushing the pharmaceutical industry into innovation. Europe was already taking the lead, and the USA was falling behind. Under Lois Ann Beaver’s leadership, whilst working at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) a small group of scientists kick-started a new conference with the late Georges Guiochon as the first chairman. From the beginning, the conference aimed to bring the chromatography community together in one place to encourage collaboration, advance education, and drive innovation—developing new tools and deepening the understanding of preparative chromatography to support successful implementation in manufacturing. Forty years later, the conference is still going strong, and the legacy of Guiochon continues.

Chromatography was discovered at the beginning of the century, but significant development in gas and liquid high-performance chromatography occurred in the second half of the century. Development of equipment in the 1970s and 1980s, such as dynamic axial compression columns, significantly helped the process to become more robust and reliable. The development of stationary phases, moving away from irregular beads and manufacturing better spherical, monodispersed particles with better surface chemistries, made preparative chromatography even more attractive and cost-effective. In the 1990s, advances in computing power made modeling of chromatographic processes more affordable, leading to an increase in the understanding of equilibrium isotherms. Using more complex models allowed for a more accurate prediction of processes, and the development of complex systems, such as simulated moving bed, was made possible. The list of innovations occurring over the past 40 years is long, and providing a catalog is not the intent here. Over the years, these innovations were showcased at the Prep conference, sparking new ideas and further developments that opened additional opportunities to enhance processes and achieve greater purity.

The meeting has been held every year since 1985, mostly on the East Coast, starting in Washington D.C., then moving between Philadelphia and Baltimore, with a few exceptions on the West Coast, in San Francisco Bay in 1999, 2003, and 2008. A few years (1988, 1990, 1992) were skipped as the meeting alternated with a similar conference in Europe (SPICA). Prep went virtual during the COVID years (2020–2021) and took a break in 2023 before being brought back under new leadership in 2024.

This year, Prep is back once again in Philadelphia. The exhibition floor is lined with over 40 vendors eager to show their latest products and to offer their development services. The program is fully packed with the traditional pre-conference day for training workshops. Attendees can learn or refresh their knowledge before the conference by signing up for these training sessions presented by experts in the field. The following two and a half days are stacked with 15 sessions and 69 oral communications from both academia and the industry, covering a broad range of developments and applications from fundamentals and modeling to process intensification, viral vector, mAb purifications, and many more. A poster session, where students as well as vendors can present more specific projects or products, will complement the oral presentations. Vendor workshops provide opportunities to better understand product offerings, and many breaks and social events are set to foster networking and build long-lasting relationships. Sustainability is an important theme, and the dedicated session is sponsored by the ACS Green Chemistry Pharmaceutical Roundtable, including a plenary lecture from Alois Jungbauer, University of Natural Resources, Vienna, Austria. Guiochon’s award will be given to a member of the community recognized by peers for excellence in chromatography.

With the increasing complexity of molecules and improvements in analytical techniques, the purity of pharmaceutical ingredients is increasingly challenging. Preparative chromatography is the ultimate purification technique, and the Prep conference still has an important role to play in achieving this goal. For further information visit: https://www.prep2025.org