46
August/September 2010
Chromatographic Society
Meetings Round-Up Advances in High Resolution and
High Speed Separations Chromatographic Society 1-day meeting Thursday 18th
by John Lough
Belying the general gloomy atmosphere prevailing over the developed world pharmaceutical industry, an encouraging number of approximately 116 delegates descended upon AstraZeneca’s new Alderley Park conference centre to engage with the latest advances in high resolution and high speed separations. Appropriately there was also a good turn out of exhibitors (12) led by Gold Sponsors, Waters. In terms of quality of scientific meeting the bar has recently been raised by Spring Symposia drawing speakers not just from the UK but also from nearby mainland European countries. This meeting followed the same pattern, UK speakers in fact being comfortably outnumbered.
of quantifying peaks spread over several chromatograms in the second dimension and for the second dimension to be different in its selectivity from the first dimension. He finished his presentation on an upbeat note, speculating about a future outlook involving 2D-LC with MS detection and even multi-dimensional LC.
Opening the batting for the home team was Patrick Pettersson (AstraZeneca) R&D Lund, Sweden) who addressed “Implementation of U(H)PLC within a global pharmaceutical company – A new way of working.” This involved discussing the perceived advantages at the outset, the choice of Waters Acquity, the actual implementation and through to the lessons learned and the conclusions. Amongst the many interesting points that were raised were
The scene was set for the meeting by Peter Schoenmakers who elegantly introduced the key issue of peak capacity, comparing the improved peak capacity of gradient LC over isocratic LC. Drawing from his own experience of GC (where a peak capacity of 1000 is fairly normal) and 2D GC, Schoenmakers went on to deal with 2D-LC. He described his own SEC x RPLC work and work from Peter Carr involving indole metabolite standards in which there was a peak capacity of 1800. Instrumentation for 2D LC is not available commercially and so it was very enlightening when Schoenmakers showed his own homemade system to underscore the fact that 2D LC is accessible and not far-off science fiction. His system was capable of generating 1000 peaks in 50 minutes when taking realistic cuts. While pointing to the advantages of 2D-LC and drawing on illustrations from his work on block copolymers, he also alluded to issues such as the need, in both dimensions, for the peaks to be evenly spaced out, the value of focussing fractions as they moved onto the second dimension, the problem
that method development and validation had become much faster, sample preparation had become a new bottleneck and there had been a 62% reduction in the number of LC systems with a concomitant increase in benchspace and reduction in solvent consumption. The adoption of U(H)PLC had brought about a new way of working. Walk-up systems with a ‘buffer bar’, a booking system, automatic column reordering, column selection maps and standardised screens were being enjoyed by increasing numbers of users. Along the way some lessons had been learned. The entire exercise had not been without its problems though. It had become apparent that buffers should not be kept too long because of the growth of microorganisms. The concept of “finger-tight” connections had been challenged during over-ambitious work at greater than 80% of maximal pressure. Poor baselines at low wavelength had been encountered when using trifluoroacetic acid as an additive. However, the entire exercise had been more successful than expected, thanks in part to help from Lean Six
March 2010, AstraZeneca R&D, Alderley Park, Cheshire, UK
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