Corporate Retrospective 2007: Tosoh

Tosoh Corporation, the parent company of Tosoh Bioscience, was established in Japan in 1935 as a domestic producer of caustic soda and soda ash. Today, Tosoh is a multinational corporation that supplies inorganic chemicals, petrochemicals and specialty materials.

Not satisfied with the performance of gel permeation chromatography columns available in the late 1960s, Tosoh developed its own GPC columns for the analysis of its polymer products. Responding to numerous requests, Tosoh started to share the S-type columns with other polymer manufacturers in 1971, the year that marks the beginning of Tosoh's liquid chromatography business and the birth of the TSK-GEL brand. Following this milestone, Tosoh completed its first generation product portfolio by the end of 1970s. Included were silica-and polymer-based TSK-GEL columns for all common modes and HPLC instrumentation. In the 1980s Tosoh launched the Toyopearl resins for the purification of biopharmaceutical drugs in commercial manufacturing processes.

Tosoh Bioscience was established in 1987 as TosoHaas, a joint venture between Tosoh and the Rohm and Haas Company, to better serve markets outside of Japan. In 2000, Tosoh Bioscience became a wholly owned subsidiary of Tosoh Corporation with sales, marketing, and technical service offices in the United States and Germany.

Today, TSK-GEL columns for high performance size-exclusion chromatography are used by researchers and quality control chemists who depend on these best-in-class columns to analyze proteins and all types of industrial polymers. It is less well known that Tosoh stood at the forefront of the current trend towards ultra-high performance with the groundbreaking introductions of 2.2-μm silica and 2.5-μm non-porous resin particles in the mid 1990s. Tosoh was also an early leader in the search for better solutions for the retention of highly polar compounds.

In recent years, Tosoh has introduced new lines of reversed phase and HILIC columns, which further exemplify Tosoh's ability to provide timely and innovative solutions for today's most challenging separation problems. Quality products, coupled with unwavering customer support, remain the focus for all employees in the Tosoh Bioscience group.

By combining expertise and a portfolio of over 500 specialty products, Tosoh continues to provide innovative solutions in basic biological research, drug discovery, medicinal chemistry, agriculture, manufacturing, and other industrial applications around the globe.

Congratulations to LCGC on their 25th anniversary.

Tosoh Bioscience