Pittcon 2024: Lifetime Achievement and Emerging Leader in Chromatography Awards

At the 2024 Pittcon conference in San Diego, California, LCGC International presented its Lifetime Achievement in Chromatography and Emerging Leader in Chromatography Awards. These annual awards are chosen by an independent scientific committee and honor the contributions of two outstanding separation scientists.

The winner of the 2024 Lifetime Achievement in Chromatography Award is Wolfgang Lindner, professor emeritus in analytical chemistry at the University of Vienna. Lindner has made significant contributions in liquid chromatography (LC) and the development of chiral drugs. He has developed and licensed several chiral stationary phases that have been widely used by both researchers and the pharmaceutical industry.

The 2024 Emerging Leader in Chromatography is Martina Catani, an assistant professor of analytical chemistry at the University of Ferrara in Italy. Catani's research focuses on the purification of polypeptides, oligonucleotides, and proteins by means of single-column and continuous countercurrent multi-column preparative liquid chromatography (LC); separation of natural cannabinoids; and investigation of kinetic and thermodynamic phenomena in chiral and achiral high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC).

Awards Lecture

The awards lecture honoring the winners began with Lindner’s presentation, “My Way and Conceptual Reflections on the Development of Enantioselective Chiral Ion Exchangers for LC.” On the basis of selected examples, Lindner will presented his way of developing diverse chiral ion-exchanger type chiral stationary phases (CSPs), particularly of the Cinchona based type so-called motifs, and discuss the stereoselective molecular recognition mechanism in theory and practice.

This is followed by “Chiral Stationary Phase Selectivity, Coupled Columns and Hyphenated Systems in Bioanalytical Applications,” presented by Michael Laemmerfofer of the University of Tuebingen in Germany. In this presentation, the potential of chiral stationary phases in metabolomics and lipidomics, for therapeutic peptide analysis, and nucleic acid pharmaceuticals was discussed, as well as how ion mobility mass spectrometry (IM-MS) coupling can combine enantioselectivity of chiral stationary phases with diastereomer/constitutional isomer selectivity of IMS for establishing enantioselective amino acid profiles in about 1 min.

Kevin Schug of The University of Texas-Arlington presented “Applications of Untargeted Chemical Analysis.” Untargeted analysis refers to a method designed to capture as much information about a particular sample dimension, as possible. This talk described the use of untargeted analysis for various applications, including analysis and differentiation of beer types, effects of bacterial stressors, and natural products, specifically psilocybin mushrooms.

Next, Catani will presented “Pros and Cons on the Use of Dimethyl Carbonate as Green Organic Modifier in Liquid Chromatography." Catani discussed the possibility of using dimethyl carbonate as organic modifier in LC with UV-Vis detection through a series of case studies, including fundamental studies on retention in linear conditions, up to applications in preparative conditions for the purification of pharmaceutically relevant peptides.

The session concluded with the presentation “Retention Mechanism on Phosphodiester Stationary Phases in Hydrophilic Interaction Liquid Chromatography and Purely Aqueous Mobile Phase,” led by Attila Felinger of The University of Pecs (Hungary). In this study, the adsorption behavior of caffeine and theophylline under hydrophilic interaction chromatography and purely aqueous conditions was investigated on four phosphodiester stationary phases. Solute adsorption isotherms were determined by frontal analysis or inverse method. The bi-Langmuir model was found to be the best choice to describe the behavior of caffeine and theophylline adsorption in purely aqueous conditions, whereas the bi-Moreau model describes the adsorption phenomena in HILIC conditions. The results obtained demonstrate that the interaction of caffeine and theophylline with the stationary phase surface varies depending on the mobile phase composition.