CONFERENCE REVIEW
53
Lectures of particular
interest to the Pharmaceutical Industry;
Fig 3. Musical opening. ©(PHOTO:GRYSA)
Fig 4. A very happy recipient of the Jubilee medal. Gert Desmet (right) receives the award from Denise Wallworth.
©(PHOTO:GRYSA)
Themeeting also coincided with the anniversary of the commercialisation of one of the UK’smost interesting and unique contributions to the field of separation science, Hypercarb TM, the porous graphitic carbon developed by Prof John Knox at theWolfson LC Unit at University of Edinburgh 20 years ago. Rathermore of a ‘niche product’ these days as opposed to the ‘universal column’ tag it first promised, it nevertheless is still capable of solving extreme problems. A
workshop was held in the afternoon of the opening day with International speakers fromindustry and academia, speaking about their experiences and successes with the column including,
• Polar retention properties (Prof. M-C Hennion, ESPCI, France) • PGC in SFC (Prof. CWest, Unversite d’Orleans, France)
• High temperature separations (Prof. R Smith, Loughborough University, UK)
• A comparison between HILIC and Hypercarb for polar retention (Dr. E Sanchez, Evotec, UK)
Thermo Fisher who now manufactures the product line then sponsored a reception in the evening for all attendees to celebrate the event and of course no party is complete without a cake and this was no exception (fig 5).
Fig 6. The meeting kicks off in spectacular style. ©(kBics Photographers)
It is widely accepted that themajormarket segment to which HPLC, and associated techniques, are most applicable, is the Pharmaceutical Industry. Not wishing to play down the role scientists who are active in other areas such as Academia, Environmental, Chemicals, Food and Beverage and Life Science areas, space permits here only a review of the talks ofmost important to the Pharma
industry.Of coursemany of the discoveries in this area do benefit those working in othermarket segments.
The key topics of lectures attended included HPLC fundamentals, Multi dimensional LC, Column coupling, Column technology, Pharmaceutical analysis, QbD and SFC. Much of the content was based around UHPLC and more efficient particles. It was soon apparent that Van Deemter plots were yesterdays news and that kinetic or Poppe plots were in vogue as they help describe and explain the effects of pressure and temperature on sub 2um separations and allow effective comparison with other particle sizes, column formats, different operating modes (e.g. High temp, UHPLC) and even other techniques.
A talk by XiaoliWang (AstraZeneca,Wilmington, USA) gave the best account of this when comparing sub 2umcolumns with superficially porous Halo-type columns.With increased time, Halo columns can generatemore plates whilst at shorter analysis times similar performance is possible, but requires increased linear velocity on a Halo. Highlighted was the fact that if you could use a superficially porous phase at 600-1200 bar this would bring further improvements.
GertDesmet is also big in the area of kinetic plots and also gave a fascinating talk. His recent publications are well worth a read and his website enables you to produce your own kinetic plots.
Roger Smith of Loughborough University gave a lecture on high temperature gradient separations. This has been an area of interest to Prof. Smith for some years. The green nature of this application is of note as increased temp can eliminate the necessity of organic solvent as high temp alters the polarity of water.
A talk by Chromatography legendGeorgesGuiochon was amust see. He lectured on all aspects ofmulti-dimensional LC, this was verymuch an ‘idiots’ guide, describing various types of 2DLC (on-line, stop and go and off-line) and their relative advantages and how they canmaximise peak capacity. This is handy for especially complexmixtures. A key point was theNobuo factor, whereby the fraction density (cut) should be optimized.Off line 2DLC can give a peak capacity of ~16000 in 24 hours.
Fig 5. Happy Birthday Hypercarb ©(PHOTO:GRYSA)
To finish the evening a spectacular firework display which lit up the sky above Dresden was held.
Pat Sandra gave his customary plenary lecture. As usual this was an eye opener and looked at state of the art fluid separations. Be this UHPLC, SFC or EFC (enhanced fluidity chromatography, uses SFC conditions but not in the supercritical state). All techniques allowed high throughput and productivity andmost importantly robust separations. The future should look at continuing our education in HPLC fundamentals, embracingQbDand also looking at green chemistry. EFC allows the latter with separations using water, acetone or ethanol, carbon dioxide and a pH modifier. Reverse HILIC (or per aqueous LC – PALC) should
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