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More and more groups are exploring the utility of peptides with an ever widening variety of applications. And although peptides are getting cheaper to purchase outright, many groups are continuing to ...

In the past, when I have synthesized a new peptide, I always ran a “scout run” – a small scale injection, usually with an analytical HPLC column – to both get an idea of the crude purity and also to i...

You’ve just finished a peptide synthesis and now it’s time to cleave the peptide from the resin. You’ve selected a specific cleavage cocktail, performed the reaction and now what? The vast majority of...

Recently there has been substantial motivation to consider and evaluate alternative, more environmentally friendly solvents. Some countries have even gone so far as to ban some of the more toxic, yet ...

As the rules for cell permeability continue to be elucidated, peptides are increasingly being used to deliver either themselves or cargo to the cell’s interior. One thing is clear, increasing the over...

Have you ever wondered if there was a faster (and possibly cheaper) way to purify your peptides?

Flash chromatography can be a challenging technique for peptide purification due to the lower resolution achieved with large particles. While some may see this as a disadvantage, the significantly gre...

Reversed phase flash chromatography is increasingly being utilized by peptide chemists to decrease purification time and efforts. The larger particles used in flash columns enable large crude sample l...

Mass-directed purification, whether with a preparative HPLC or a bench-top flash system, is quickly gaining interest in the peptide purification space. The simple fact is that using a specific mass, r...

Resins for solid phase peptide synthesis can vary significantly in both functionalization and composition, leading to mixed results at the end of a synthesis. Previously, I demonstrated how the resin ...

It used to be easy with only polystyrene based resin types, but nowadays there is a broad choice of types to choose from, including everything from the C-terminal functionality (Rink vs Wang) to the p...

There are several strategies employed when a peptide synthesis requires optimization. Typically, the first thing considered is whether or not to double couple specific amino acids within the sequence....

As a peptide chemist, I was trained to purify my peptides with reversed-phase HPLC, just as many a peptide chemist before me. Despite the hundreds of hours I’ve logged in front of an HPLC, injecting s...

There are several strategies often employed to improve peptide purity achieved using reversed phase HPLC. These strategies can include, changing column length, particle size, particle functionality (C...

One common technique in HPLC for improving difficult peptide separations is to extend the column length, a topic I explored for flash chromatography in a previous post. However, alternative purificati...

Peptides, while exhibiting potential for unique specificity and affinity, still suffer from stability issues when introduced to a biological system. One strategy to overcome these stability issues is ...

Peptides, by nature, are composed of amino acids with potentially ionizable chemical moieties. The ionization state of any of these moieties can significantly impact the peptide’s chromatographic beha...

As the complexity of peptides continues to grow, so does the use of amino acids with side chain protecting groups that can be selectively removed, leaving the peptide on resin and the remaining side c...

Orthogonal amino acid protecting groups effectively expand the chemical tool kit available to peptide chemists allowing for synthesis of much more complex molecules. Often times, orthogonal protecting...

Disulphide rich peptides are being identified in species of both plants and animals at increasing rates. As new molecules are discovered and disulphide bonding patterns characterized, the need for sim...

In a previous post, I did some work evaluating the efficiency of alloc removal with tetrakis palladium using microwave assistance and atmospheric conditions, which worked beautifully.

Hydrocarbon stapling as a strategy to stabilize secondary structures of peptides, while introduced by Miller, Blackwell and Grubbs in the mid 1990s, really grew to the forefront with seminal work by S...

Orthogonal side chain protecting groups, particularly for Fmoc-based solid phase peptide synthesis, are growing not only in diversity, but also in popularity. These protecting groups enable post-synth...

Disulphide rich peptides have gained significant attention recently due to their incredible biological stability and tolerance to epitope grafting. This class of peptides is often folded in solution, ...

When it comes to synthesizing a peptide, the first thing that comes to mind is the number of stoichiometric equivalents to use. Sometimes that number is as few as 1.5, sometimes it’s as high as 20! Bu...

In my role as a peptide application scientist, I have had the pleasure of working with many groups that are venturing into the world of peptides for the first time. Although it seems rather straightfo...

Would you ever consider an alternative to reversed- phase HPLC to purify your synthetic peptides? It seems like a silly question, right. And like many of you, I literally laughed at my Product Manager...

More and more we are seeing groups that would historically undertake only traditional organic chemistry or possibly biochemistry/biology, incorporate peptides into their research programs. While this ...

There are many techniques available to analyse and identify synthetic compounds that we are taught in the first few years of our chemistry education. While tools like NMR spectroscopy, IR spectroscopy...

"50% of my time as a Ph.D. was spend baby-sitting columns," stated Dr. László Kürti during our interview in February. Keep reading to find out more about how his team was able to increase their produc...

Your choice of sample loading technique can, and likely will, affect the separation and purity of your targeted compound. While liquid loading is easy and often fit for purpose, it can provide some is...

Purifying polar organic compounds can be very challenging. In a previous post I have discussed using reversed-phase flash chromatography to retain and purify ionizable and ionic compounds. My colleagu...

Usually, a 2-solvent or binary gradient will separate your desired compound from the by-products and impurities. Sometimes though, you can encounter a mixture in which some compounds co-elute and are ...

Flash purification is a preparative liquid chromatography technique. As such, it incorporates the same types of components as preparative high-pressure liquid chromatography (pHPLC) – pump, gradient m...

The challenges organic, medicinal, and natural product chemists face are many: from designing reactions, to optimizing synthesis, work-up / extraction, and purification / isolation of the desired comp...

The products of organic synthesis are designed with specific functional groups in order to possess desired properties. Depending on the compound’s functionality, it can be neutral, acidic, or basic as...

Chromatography is a common tool of the chemistry laboratory, and most chemists involved in synthesis have a good idea how automated flash purification system work on the lab bench. However, knowing ho...

Have you ever run flash column chromatography with mass detection (Flash-MS) and observed the total ion current or TIC increase during the purification only to find that there was no discernible compo...

For many chemists using generic linear gradients and even gradients based on TLC the purification results often are not selective enough to separate all of the compounds in their mix. This is especial...

Recently, I posted an article explaining why high performance TLC plates are not needed for method development for high-performance flash chromatography. Based on some excellent feedback, I see a need...

The Biotage® Selekt Flash purification system is designed for the rapid and simple isolation of target molecules from complex mixtures. Typically, this is seen in the area of drug discovery, where lar...

Sometimes we find ourselves having to make decisions fast, and act even faster - especially in situations like the one we live in today, where there is a high degree of uncertainty. In this kind of si...

In drug discovery, microwaves are common tools for heating reactions to high temperatures and pressures so that it is possible to synthesize compounds in minutes that might otherwise take hours by con...

Most chemical reactions take place in liquid form since compounds in solution are more likely to interact with each other, especially when heated. Reaction solvent choice varies based on reagent solub...

As chemists, our job is to make new molecules. If our synthetic design works as planned, we will have success and the target product made. As we all know, along with our desired compound, by-products ...

For most organic and medicinal chemists, normal-phase flash chromatography is used to purify and isolate many types of organic compounds, most with some polar functional groups which help them retain ...

Purification by reversed-phase chromatography relies primarily on a hydrophobic interaction of the molecule with the alkyl chains bonded to the stationary phase for column retention and elution throug...

For most chemists, flash purification is a means to an end. In other words, it is a tool needed to purify and isolate one compound from a mixture of compounds so that the next reaction can occur with ...

When developing reversed-phase flash chromatography methods it is important to understand the impact that a change in solvent ratio has on compound retention and, therefore, separation performance. Un...

Increasingly, organic and medicinal chemistry labs use mass-directed flash chromatography to isolate synthesized compounds. Mass-directed flash chromatography benefits are many, including collecting o...

Flash column chromatography is used by between 20 and 40 thousand organic synthesis chemists worldwide, an amazing number. For most of these chemists flash chromatography is an important part of their...

Higher performance flash columns are becoming all the rage these days. Chemists are using them for challenging as well as for routine purification. As a result, I am often asked, "do I need high-perfo...

An interesting question, at least to me. Depending on the detector brand, some mass spectrometer manufacturers recommend acetonitrile while others recommend methanol. Is there a real difference betwee...

As synthetic chemistry has evolved, so has flash chromatography. Target molecule synthesis is becoming more complicated and the synthetic products more polar. This shift in compound polarity has chang...

Acetone, as you know, is a terrific solvent. It dissolves many organic molecules, evaporates easily, is both water and organic soluble, and is cheap (relatively). These attributes tell me it should be...

I have previously posted on the topic of normal-phase optimization by evaluating different solvent blends or mixtures. I have also touched on reversed-phase method development as well suggesting chemi...

In previous posts I have discussed some options and techniques to improve detection of poorly absorbing or UV-transparent compounds – by wavelength focusing and by evaporative light-scattering (ELS).

Over the past several years, automated flash chromatography has evolved to include in-line mass detection. Typically, these single-quadrupole mass detectors are outfitted with either an atmospheric pr...

APCI (atmospheric pressure chemical ionization) and ESI (electrospray ionization) are the two most frequently utilized mass detection tools for automated flash chromatography.

Biotage, pioneers in flash chromatography, started packing columns with silica for flash purification 30 than years ago. Site director Chris Williams tells the story of packing columns - "part science...

This is an interesting question that does not have a straightforward answer. In fact, there are many materials that are potentially useful sorbents for dry loading crude mixtures. Some of the more pop...

For most synthesis and natural product chemists, flash chromatography is the primary tool for purification and isolation of compounds of interest. Purification methods include flash system defaulted l...

In our more environmentally aware climate, chemical and pharmaceutical companies now prioritize reducing organic solvent use in chemistry labs. Employees and shareholders alike are pushing their compa...

Various flash chromatography sample loading options are available including liquid and dry loading. Choosing the right technique is important because your sample loading choices (sample solvent and dr...

Biotage®, a pioneer in Flash Purification, launched the unique, removable cap SNAP flash chromatography columns in 2007. This beneficial column design feature continues with the newest Biotage flash c...

"With using the entire workflow, we're able to do things more efficiently," stated Dr. Justin Anglin during our interview in February at the Center for Drug Discovery at Baylor College of Medicine. Ke...

In order to perform flash chromatography consistently, the equipment you use must be properly maintained by following some “best practices”. These best practices include using clean solvents (I typica...

Using a “dry” loading technique with flash chromatography typically improves compound purity and overall separation quality compared to liquid loading. The reasons for this I have prophesized previous...

Flash chromatography is a chemical separation technique used to purify chemical mixtures. Because it is a purification technology, the process is also referred to as flash purification.

Equilibrating silica flash chromatography columns is something I always do. There are chemists who see this as an unnecessary, time-and-solvent-wasting step. However, because getting consistent, predi...

This question is one that is increasing in frequency. Over the past 10 or so years reversed-phase flash chromatography use has increased dramatically. Likewise, reversed-phase preparative HPLC (RP pHP...

Many chemists today find they need to synthesize molecules at higher temperatures in order to force difficult reactions to proceed. Solvents such as DMF, DMSO, and NMP are commonly used in these react...

You have performed your synthesis and now it is time to purify the reaction mix. You have used thin-layer chromatography (TLC) and see a separation but when you try to purify with flash column chromat...

Organic and medicinal chemists frequently utilize flash chromatography to purify their reaction mixtures. Normal-phase flash chromatography is most often used but may not the best methodology, especia...

Organic chemistry can be messy with not only the desired compound created but also myriad by-products. As synthetic chemists, our goal is to make these desired compounds in sufficient yield and purity...

Knowing when it is time to replace your reversed-phase flash column is a question I am asked frequently along with…

Think of orthogonal flash chromatography as 2D-chromatography where a reaction mixture or natural product extract is purified first with one methodology or solvent gradient then re-purified with a dif...

In today’s post I’d like to discuss how you can check your Biotage flash system to ensure it is running smoothly and still performing at the high level and capability that is expected of all Biotage p...

Ever experience the problem where you load your dissolved sample into a flash column via a syringe only to encounter either resistance or “blowback”? Blowback is a term describing the situation where ...

Ensuring that the product of a reaction is pure is critical to that compound’s viability as a marketable entity. Impurities often require characterization if they are in excess of regulated limits. Th...

For many chemists lab budgets, especially for consumable items, are limited. One way of trying to stretch their lab budget is to reuse disposable flash chromatography cartridges.

Flash chromatography – a purification tool for both organic chemists and natural product researchers. This tool is essential when you need to remove impurities from your targeted product, or products,...

A baseline that rises or drops when using flash chromatography with a UV detector can be a problem, especially if you are trying to collect compounds with poor detectability or that exist in low quant...

Automated flash chromatography has become an integral component of the workflows of both synthetic organic chemistry and natural product research. The most utilized chromatographic technique is normal...

Well, it’s spring as I write this, my favorite time of year, and the foliage is in various stages of bloom. I like the rebirth of nature and the floral aromas that emanate from the blooms. These botan...

Reversed-phase flash chromatography is extremely useful when purifying all types of compounds. Compounds that are charged or ionizable, however, typically need either a pH modifier (acid or base) or a...

Most chemists I meet utilizing flash chromatography use linear gradients. These gradients are either very generic (X% to Y% over a certain time or volume) or can be complex with multiple slope changes...

Flash chromatography gradients need to provide as good of a separation between the target compound at its closest eluting by-products as possible in order to maximize product purity and load. Many che...

I often get questions from customers about the influence of flow rate on their flash chromatography. Typically, the questions are…

For many years I have been publishing a blog on flash chromatography, especially related to its theory and application. It dawned on me today that one area I have not yet addressed is the impact of th...

Normal-phase flash chromatography is an integral component of the organic synthesis workflow. Since reactions rarely generate 100% pure product, they need purification and flash chromatography is the ...

Gradient or isocratic elution, that is the question. Within flash chromatography these are the options afforded to separate reaction mixtures and natural product extracts and is the focus of this post...

Gradients, used in chromatographic methods, assist with chemical separation and elution. They begin with “weak” elution conditions and end with “strong” elution conditions.

A fairly common question I receive is "how much of my reaction mixture can I load on my flash chromatography column?". To this question there is not a cut and dry answer because of a number of variabl...

Chromatography is as much an art as it is a science. Between synthetic reaction products and natural products, the range of compounds requiring separation, purification, and isolation is broad and div...

In previous posts I offered some suggestions to improve the “greenness” of normal-phase flash purification. As the use of reversed-phase flash purification has increased the past few years I thought I...

Reversed-phase flash chromatography use continues to increase for a variety of reasons. Unlike silica normal-phase flash columns, which typically are used only once, reversed-phase flash columns can b...

For many labs on a tight budget, keeping expenses at a minimum is crucial. Many of these same labs are also required to become more sustainable, or greener, by reducing the amount of organic solvent t...

Have you ever been faced with the challenge of evaporating solvent from a reaction mixture where the target compound and perhaps some by-products are temperature sensitive and degrade or decompose wit...

Chemists using silica columns for normal-phase flash chromatography typically equilibrate their columns prior to loading their samples. Companies manufacturing automated flash purification systems oft...

With all forms of chromatography there are limitations relating to sample load – both mass and volume. These are independent variables which, for the best results, should be investigated separately. I...

Flash chromatography is a purification technique used by chemists to isolate their targeted compound from by-products and impurities. Because the reaction mixture (or natural product extract) may have...

Automated flash chromatography systems have helped synthetic chemists speed up their synthetic research. One major advancement with these systems over the past 15 or so years has been the addition of ...

The evolution of flash column chromatography has brought chemists many new and exciting options for crude mixture purification. Among them are so-called high-performance flash columns or cartridges. T...

Over the course of my career, I have had terrific interactions with a multitude of chemists discussing chromatography. When it comes to flash chromatography the approaches from these chemists ranged f...

With most chromatographic purifications, only two solvents are needed to adequately separate compounds from each other. Unfortunately, there are instances where the separation is either poor or cannot...

This is an interesting question that I am asked from time to time. There does seem to be two camps in which chemists reside – one believing longer and thinner columns provide better separations and th...

The bane of organic synthesis for most chemists is purification rather than synthesis. Synthetic reaction mixtures are rarely devoid of impurities so some type of purification is necessary. Most often...

Media particle size and solvent flow rate play major roles in chromatographic separations including flash purification. This is true in both reversed-phase chromatography (aka partition chromatography...

Many chemists I talk to understand that TLC data is useful for flash chromatography method development. Most also know that they should try to get their target compound to elute with an Rf between 0.1...

Silica is the most commonly used sorbent for flash column chromatography. When solvent is pumped through a column packed with dry silica you may notice it gets warm and sometimes down right hot!

Selectivity and solvent strength are the most important factors that determine success or failure of a chromatographic separation. These two independent dynamics apply to both normal- and reversed-pha...

For chemists, flash chromatography is part of their everyday synthesis workflow. For most syntheses, crude reaction mixtures are purified by normal-phase (aka adsorption) chromatography. There are tim...

Scaling up reversed-phase flash chromatography methods is often necessary as reaction scale increases. This is especially true when other non-chromatographic purification techniques do not work or mee...

As the popularity of prep-scale, reversed-phase flash chromatography increases, so does the frequency that I get asked this question, "How do I determine loading capacity in reversed-phase flash chrom...

How to choose between normal- and reversed-phase flash column chromatography is an excellent question and one that my readers often ask. Those who use column chromatography know that as long as the re...

With reversed-phase flash column chromatography becoming increasingly popular for routine purification, understanding how to make the cartridges last (since they cost more) is important to know.

Evaporative Light-Scattering Detection, or ELSD for short, is a technology used with liquid chromatography to see UV-transparent (and UV-absorbing) compounds. In a previous post I talked about some ap...

A question I hear a lot from chemists is “how much can I load”. The answer is always “it depends on your separation quality”. At that point I begin asking about the TLC data and purification goals. Pu...

When it comes to the purification of polar, water-soluble compounds reversed-phase chromatography is the most commonly used approach. However, because of strong stationary phase – mobile phase repulsi...

In my role as senior technical specialist at Biotage I am often asked about compound detection options. For most flash chromatography methods, UV is the default detection tool since many compounds do ...

Applying green chemistry principals to flash purification is becoming increasingly important. In this post, I discuss ways to make flash column chromatography greener by reducing solvent use through o...

In previous posts I have touched upon various sample loading options and how they impact flash chromatographic performance, primarily in normal-phase flash purification. As the use of reversed-phase f...

This is an age-old question that has been around a long time, perhaps as long as me (and I have been around a while) – “Does silica dissolve in methanol?”

When it comes to the purification of polar organic compounds many chemists turn to normal-phase flash chromatography with dichloromethane and methanol as the mobile phase. This solvent system often ca...

Compound detection challenges are, for many chemists, a part of life. In a previous post I discussed how wavelength focusing can help your flash system detect and fractionate compounds with poor chrom...

Mass spectrometers today are typically available with either Electrospray Ionization (ESI) or APCI (Atmospheric Pressure Chemical Ionization) sources. That’s really nice but, how do you know which sou...

Have you ever experienced compound tailing or streaking on your TLC plate or flash chromatography results and wondered what in the world is going on here? Well, there can be multiple reasons for this ...

Compounds precipitating during flash chromatography is at best an inconvenience when working up your crude reaction mixture. Precipitation during purification typically happens in the column or in the...

Up to six compounds can be easily separated with an automated step-gradient optimizer embedded in modern flash chromatography systems.

slash column chromatography has been practiced by chemists since the 1970s. That practice requires the silica in the column be properly wetted to remove trapped gasses and ensure uniform flow (remembe...

On a beautiful sunny day in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, I travelled to the University of North Carolina campus where I spoke with Dr. Alfredo Picado about how using our new Sfär columns has impacted ...

On a scenic drive up the I-15 in southern California, I got to take a tour of the undergraduate lab at California State University, San Marcos with Dr. Robert Iafe. His lab is one of the first to have...

When Isolera™ was launched, the maximum system pressure that could be reached was 10 bars, but reaching that pressure was a challenge since most of the Flash columns could not withstand the higher pre...

Split peaks? Multiple peaks? Are they really a problem? What causes the issue?

Are you observing more chromatographic peaks than you expect compared to TLC or other assessment data? Well, it could be that your method is separating some isomers or, it could be that there is an ac...

Dry loading crude samples for flash purification typically works better than liquid loading, especially for challenging purifications. In this post, I discuss how the ratio of crude sample to dry load...

Learn more about how to get in control of your Flash Purification.

How does flow rate impact my flash column chromatography separation? This is the kind of question I frequently get. After all, we all know that flow rates that are too high or too low can result in ba...

In this post I will delve into six key factors that impact your purification success in flash column chromatography.

Plate count is a theoretical number describing the separation efficiency of a chromatography column. In short, it is a measure an eluting compound's bandwidth at the time it elutes from a column, Equa...

In all my years of working with medicinal and organic chemists, I have found that choosing how many grams of silica to use for purification by flash chromatography is something frequently guessed at. ...

Yes, the title is a bit salacious but it got your attention, didn’t it? I believe this is a topic worthy of discussion as it relates to flash chromatography for purification because many chemists beli...

In a previous post I talked about column size, specifically long-thin versus short-fat and the impact of the cartridge’s dimensions on purification performance. With that comparison I showed that in p...

This is a question being asked of my colleagues and me more and more frequently, especially in pharma accounts. Why? Well, you are familiar with the adage – Time is Money, right. Well this really appl...

Most flash column manufacturers now offer “high performance” flash chromatography columns with the promise of higher loading, increased purity, and even reduced solvent consumption. Working for Biotag...

From October 1st, 2018 Biotage® Sfär columns are available and they appear automatically on the Selekt instrument. Learn more about Selekt and Sfär.

On December 6th, 2018, Bob Bickler, Senior Technical Specialist, recorded a webinar on Inspiring Productivity with Modern Flash Chromatography. To learn more, read the description below as well as wat...

For many chemists, flash chromatography with UV-triggered fractionation is part of their everyday workflow. Prior to flash chromatography, the reaction mixtures are either analyzed by TLC, analyzed by...

The most critical and time-consuming part of organic chemistry synthesis is the purification step. Running a column, testing the resulting fraction, and maybe re-running columns takes too much time – ...

OK. We get it. You aren’t a molecule factory. Creating the right target molecule as soon as possible in order to keep your pharmaceutical research project moving isn’t easy or routine. Frankly, organi...

Our recent survey of organic synthetic chemists showed that more than half of you feel that the most enjoyable aspect of your work is researching new chemistries, while 33% told us that preparing reac...

Isn’t amazing chemistry what you want to do every day? Don’t you strive for white crystalline final products? But things get in the way, such as other priorities, endless emails and frequent interrupt...

Discovery chemistry labs synthesizing new molecular entities (NMEs) are under pressure to improve their productivity. Optimizing the design-make-test-analyze (DMTA) cycle in the discovery process mean...

Pharmaceutical researchers feel real pressure to increase their R&D productivity by ‘doing more with less’. Despite having limited internal resources and specialized expertise, discovery chemistry res...

New drug substances, the result of more than a decade of pharmaceutical research and development, have revolutionized society by saving lives, increasing life-spans, reducing suffering, avoiding surge...

Sfär Stands for Spherical, Biotage® Stands for Quality

Konfidence With a Capital "K", That's Why I Selekt Biotage

I think that the phrase ‘creative productivity’ captures the essence of an organic chemist’s work. It’s not about the number of new molecules produced per day at all. Creative organic chemists have mu...

Creative productivity

Organic reactions are generally inefficient, which means that crude reaction mixtures require work-up and purification to remove by-products and unreacted starting materials and/or catalysts. The goal...

First, join me on a flashback to my past as a discovery chemist just fresh out of grad school and eager to make a difference in pharmaceutical research. I was advised by my boss to model my behavior a...

With synthesizing new molecular entities (NMEs) our mission in life as chemists, we are innovators, creators even. In drug discovery research, these NMEs stand a good chance of becoming a cure for a m...

Chemistry, by its very nature, involves the use of chemicals that can be harmful, toxic and potentially damaging to the environment, which means that drug discovery currently has a large and expensive...

It (almost) doesn’t matter what the intended therapeutic outcome is, for virtually everyone who is working in the business of cannabis processing, CBD / THC remediation proceeds through well recognise...

In this blog, I will address something that is fundamental to years of classic process chemistry techniques. First disclaimer is that the pharma industry uses recrystallization for several purposes, n...

Once a chemist has seen and understands potential for the application of metal scavenging and reduction of classical iterative metal migration steps, the next question I usually receive, relates to ho...

It’s engrained in our minds and psyche, from earliest school days and exposures to science that heating a reaction speeds it up. Later, we learn some more of the details, that by increasing the temper...

Another excellent question we received following seminars and presentations relates to the function and activity of metal scavengers. IUPAC nomenclature rules combined with various naming systems and ...

Now we have a screening candidate, we just need to scale up our work, it is always advisable to initially to scale in factors of ~10 in our experience, although for well-used processes and repetitive ...

There are two starting points, depending on your preference of whether you want to stir in a batch or flow something though a tube. If you plan to use large scale up reactors, then batch stir methods...

Removing palladium has become more and more difficult for a number of reasons. Industry is using it more frequently, due to its greener credentials as a catalyst but regulatory bodies are also reducin...

Whether for pharma, fine chemical, agrochemical, electronic or natural product research, in recent years, there has been increasing pressure to achieve and deliver higher purity products. Chemical pro...

I recently read an interesting paper from Graham Wynne and his many collaborators at the University of Oxford and CEMAS describing just how much residual palladium (Pd) is making its way through the s...

Once a chemist has seen and understands potential for the application of metal scavenging and reduction of classical iterative metal migration steps, the next question we receive usually relates to ho...

After my seminars, I often receive questions from astute attendees on the topic of activated carbon, and how the more modern powerful approach of metal scavenging compares to the traditional applicati...

Biotage metal scavengers are widely proven and adopted solutions for the removal of metals such as palladium, from chemical products such as APIs and used in industry thousands of times, the world ove...

I am often asked why reversed-phase TLC data does not translate well to reversed-phase flash column chromatography. There are several reasons for this and in this post I will attempt to explain the ch...

Method transfer from reversed-phase TLC (thin layer chromatography) to reversed-phase flash column chromatography can be very challenging. Because of this, I often recommend using HPLC for reversed-ph...

Sometimes it feels as if organic chemistry and chromatography are a mixture of art and science. Maybe its because of the necessary creativity needed to address the variety of challenges that we face a...

COVID-19 caused accelerated research into developing vaccine options. Some of the created vaccines are based on mRNA which, if not protected, easily degrades in humans before its therapeutic benefits ...

Chemists are often taught how to use glass columns in schools, so they take fundamental background experience into industry which provides an intuitive advantage in process development applications. H...

For chemists performing bench-scale organic synthesis, flash column chromatography is often the primary purification technique. When synthesis needs scaling to multi-gram levels, so does the flash pur...

Scale-up is a topic of paramount importance in the industry, drawing on inputs from safety, economic, regulatory and efficiency perspectives. Never before has so much attention focused on chemical syn...

Biotage is a leading global provider of equipment for drug discovery, life sciences and various chemical industries. Our products serve a range of clients in diverse applications, from purification of...

Large-scale chromatography is often the only solution to the purification of valuable drug compounds in the pharmaceutical industry. For many manufacturers, bespoke chromatography solutions seem the s...

There are fantastic global efforts to fight the spread of COVID-19 through therapies and vaccines and there is much research ongoing on optimizing the vital benefits that can be conferred by these inn...

The synthesis of new chemical entities certainly has a high environmental cost due to the chemicals employed, especially in flash column chromatography, where large quantities of solvents are routinel...

Chromatographic purification methods such as flash chromatography can have a high environmental impact since they typically involve large quantities of harmful or toxic solvents run at high flow rates...

This article contains information relating to the science, process and economics of CBD and THC processing.

Here is an overview of the biology and some of the terms that are used in this industry, and that you will see referred to many times. After that, we'll then look at what makes these plant extracts so...

Welcome to a second installment of the Biotage Cannabis Application development flash blog. The first post, dated August 20 2016, outlined an orthogonal approach to isolating cannabinoids from winteri...

Cannabinoid isolation requires several steps from harvesting the biomass to extraction, winterization, decarboxylation (if desired), distillation, and finally chromatographic purification and isolatio...

We’ve looked at the biology, chemistry and the workflow so let's now get to the heart of the matter for many, the process economics. As we stated previously, we need to embrace the rigors of the comme...

Cannabidiolic acid, or CBDA, has purported analgesic properties relieving pain and inflammation[1]. CBDA is also the starting material for CBD which is produced through a procedure called decarboxylat...

As one of the major cannabinoids present in cannabis, Cannabigerol (CBG), is gaining interest as possible therapeutic. Though all other cannabinoids are created from CBGA (the acid form of CBG), it is...

Cannabidiol or CBN, is a cannabinoid of interest because of its potential in medicinal applications. However, CBN is not expressed by cannabis plants in high yields and is actually formed from degrade...

Previously, I have posted on a normal-phase flash chromatography method to separate and isolate CBG from a CBD-rich hemp distillate. CBG is just one of many naturally occurring minor cannabinoids of i...

Flash chromatography is the go-to cannabinoid purification technique because of its effectiveness and relative ease of use. This technology can easily remove THC from CBD in a process known as THC rem...

Cannabicitran is one of many minor cannabinoids found in cannabis though not much is known about this compound as far as possible medicinal benefits.

Many microwave assisted organic synthesis (MAOS) reactions use polar solvents such as alcohols, DMF, DMSO, because they absorb and transfer microwave energy very efficiently. However, the downside of ...

In past posts I discussed which solvents work best for sample loading in reversed-phase flash chromatography. Recently, I was asked to provide some insight as which solvents are best in normal-phase f...

For chemists preferring or needing to dry load their crude sample mixtures to get an acceptable flash purification result, using the right ratio of sample to sorbent can be quite important. Too much s...

Flash chromatography is a standard part of an organic chemist’s workflow. It is utilized after most reaction steps in order to remove most of the generated by-products and excess reagents.

Varying the concentrations of mobile phase solvents during flash purification chromatography enhances the ability of the technique to effectively isolate the desired compound from reaction by-products...

When it comes time to purify your reaction mixture or natural product extract, you have a choice to make. Should you simply load your dissolved sample onto your flash column or take the extra step to ...

Our clientele at Biotage have interesting and diverse backgrounds from highly skilled synthetic chemists, to experts in natural product chemistry, to those who are just beginning they journey with che...

Choosing a good purification strategy is an important for successful crude compound purification. A major factor in your strategy is choosing between normal-phase or reversed-phase chromatography. How...

If you synthesize organic amine compounds, especially heterocyclic, secondary, or tertiary amines, you likely have encountered problems with their chromatography using silica columns. With the amine g...

Cannabinoids, naturally occurring compounds found mainly in cannabis and hemp, have seen significant research as potential new therapeutics during the past four to five years with the passing of the 2...

TLC is the tool most used for normal-phase flash chromatography method development. For many chemists, a solvent system of hexane (or heptane) + ethyl acetate is the first, and sometimes only, solvent...

In recent years, most of the interest in the medicinal cannabis market has been focused on CBD (THC-free) and, to a lesser extent, THC. However, the market needs are changing with increasing interest ...

Cannabichromene (CBC) is one of the four most prevalent cannabinoids expressed by cannabis plants (Pollastro, 2018). Unlike the psychoactive tetrahydrocannabinol, CBC is benign in this regard, but doe...

The answer to this question is yes, reversed-phase can sometimes provide a better separation and thus better purification than normal-phase. When is reversed-phase likely to be the better choice is a ...

In many of my previous posts I have used the term column volume, typically abbreviated as CV, as a value used to help determine separation quality and loading capacity. However, I recently was asked a...

Cannabis entrepreneurs continually seek to differentiate themselves from others in the market. Some focus on THC while others focus on CBD.

According to a relatively newly published journal article (Bielser et al. Aug 20 2019, J Biotech), there has been a renewed interest in the science community in perfusion cell culture technologies for...

For anyone looking to automate their protein expression platform, the book “High-Throughput Protein Production and Purification” that was published in July 2019 (ISBN 978-1-4939-9624-7) is an excellen...

Dual flow chromatography (DFC) is the unique process of performing chromatography separations in a column bed loosely packed at the end of a pipette tip, retained by a minimally absorbing, proprietary...

Immunoprecipitation is a well-known method in biomedical research for protein isolation. This method is useful to be able to study a protein’s physiochemical properties, post-translational modificatio...

High-throughput methods for protein purification and production are becoming more common in the biopharmaceutical and biotech industry. Advancements have occurred in high-throughput expression and clo...

Purification of immunoglobulins is essential for the development of new biopharmaceuticals and affinity chromatography is a popular method for this application. One approach to purification of immunog...

Since the therapeutic use of antibodies for cancer continues to grow since Kohler and Milstein’s work on the hybridoma technology, the need for high throughput antibody purification has become a stapl...

Reversed-phase chromatography is an essential step in any drug discovery workflow, particularly as a desalting step prior to MS/MALDI analysis. One of the first choices you must make when you design y...

As the throughput in the drug discovery process of large molecules have, in recent years, become considerably more high throughput many are looking for ways to automate their sample management.

Plasmids are one of the cornerstones of modern biology, providing the foundation for several areas of important research including DNA vaccines, mRNA vaccines, viral vectors, and monoclonal antibodies...

One of the biggest challenges with automated plasmid purification is with culture growth conditions, leading to low yielding cultures. Many times, culture growth is unpredictable and hard to perfect. ...

Successful transient transfection relies on many factors, starting with a successful plasmid prep. To ensure high transfection efficiency, resulting DNA from your plasmid preps must be transfection gr...

Gene therapy has had its share of setbacks, but finally gene therapies are proving successful at treating diseases like neuromuscular disorders, cancer and blindness. Adeno-associated virus (AAV) has ...

Now that you have your purified plasmid, you will need to get an idea of its quality. Transfection efficiency is highly influenced by the quality of the plasmid, so it’s important to get a full pictur...

Plasmids are an indispensable tool that are used to clone, transfer, and manipulate genes. These small, circular fragments of DNA are typically found in bacteria but are also present in some archaea a...

When in the lab I always try to streamline and improve workflows. One of the biggest bottlenecks in the lab I’ve experienced and maybe you have too, is the drying of sample extracts.

Solid phase extraction (SPE) is a powerful sample preparation tool that makes it possible to extract semi-volatile organic compounds with varying physical and chemical properties. When used properly, ...

Every step within a solid phase extraction (SPE) procedure is imperative, but one of the most important steps that must be done properly is the air-dry step.

If you’re like me, you start the new year off with a list of resolutions for the coming months – resolutions to be more fit or to secure a promotion at work, or to reduce your carbon footprint.

Bisphenol A (BPA) is one of the most widely produced chemicals in the world – approximately 4 million metric tons annually. In recent years, BPA has received a lot of negative attention. In fact, I ca...

In a never-ending list of chemical pollutants, a compound that is gaining a lot of attention is 1,4-dioxane. In fact, New Jersey just became the first state to set regulations on the quantity of 1,4-d...

As a chemist, I’ve constantly stressed the importance of proper sample preparation. Whether I’m diluting, digesting, preconcentrating, extracting, or performing a combination of these, sample preparat...

In the world of solid phase extraction (SPE), the list of media that is available seems to be ever-growing. From polymeric stationary phases, to silica-based media, and even molecularly imprinted poly...

For thousands of years, tea has been one of the most popular drinks around the world. Not only is tea delicious, but it is also full of health benefits. Tea is an abundant source of antioxidants calle...

EPA Method 8270 is one of the 8000 series methods that outlines the preparation of wastewater samples. It is one of dozens of methods for processing wastewaters for semi volatile organic compounds (SV...

On the surface, EPA Method 8270 seems pretty straightforward. The first version of this method was published over a decade ago and many environmental labs are processing samples according to the guide...

Have you ever stopped to enjoy a bright, vibrant sunset, only to have that really annoying friend interrupt your thoughts with a comment like “you know you’re just looking at all the pollution in the ...

If you are tired of shaking liquid-liquid extractions (LLE) and want to move onto a technique that is less labor-intensive, solid phase extraction (SPE) may be your answer! There are manual as well as...

Have you ever been extracting samples for oil and grease compounds using solid phase extraction (SPE) and thought, “why do I have to use all these different solvents, when I’m just trying to get my co...

Volatile. Flammable. Skin irritant. Respiratory irritant. Possibly fatal if swallowed. For those of you processing samples according to EPA Method 1664B, you’ve seen these hazard descriptions before –...

Do you ever tire of using sodium sulphate to dry your extracts? I know I do. That is why, whenever I get the chance to avoid using it, I do. The worst experience when using sodium sulphate is when you...

On the surface, EPA Method 1664B seems pretty straightforward – use n-hexane to extract compounds (commonly referred to as “oil and grease”) from an acidified water sample. Evaporate the hexane from t...

If you’re familiar with methylene chloride (which I’m sure you are since it’s one of the most widely used laboratory solvents), you know that it’s developed a reputation for being one of the “bad boys...

“I love doing maintenance. It’s the best part of my week” – said nobody ever. Let’s be honest. We all dread performing maintenance. Why? It’s boring. I’m a chemist and I’d rather spend my time using m...

1,4-dioxane – sometimes referred to as just dioxane – has gotten a lot of press since the U.S. EPA added it to the third Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR 3). It is a relatively common sol...

Have you ever spent the day walking through the woods, paused to take in the natural sights, smells and sounds of a babbling brook or flowing waterfall and thought….“I wonder how many pesticides are i...

Happy World Water Day!! I know I love water, so as some take the time to cherish their loved ones on Valentine’s Day, why not take World Water Day to cherish and appreciate our freshwater?! I challeng...

Have you ever worked with new methods and said to yourself “yes I know what these internal standards and surrogates are measuring and when to add them to the samples”? Sounds familiar right? Well, I r...

Ever wonder if you need to perform quality control (QC) on solvents and solid phase extraction (SPE) consumables? Well, the answer is yes! You want to make sure that your disks and solvents are good t...

When working with regulated environmental methods have you ever asked yourself why are all these extracts concentrated down to one millilitre (mL) final volume? This is true for most soil and aqueous ...

When learning that you may be transitioning to a newer revision of an EPA method some thoughts may come to mind such as: it took so long to perfect this sample preparation method, or I hope they have ...

If you’ve been in the environmental arena as long as I have, seeing a “chemistry” term on the nightly news in conjunction with pollution is usually nothing to worry too much about. Sure, it’s an indic...

As the title indicates, this is Part 2 of an ongoing series where we discuss what’s going on with PFAS. For those of you who may not have read Part 1, you missed out on a summary of the controversy su...

As the seasons change, I’m reminded of a quote by Theodore Roosevelt and its significance to the air, land and water that sustain us.

Welcome to part 3 of our blog series “The Problem of PFAS”. If you are just tuning in, you might want to take a look at the previous blogs of this series as we provided background on the PFAS controve...

Have you ever opened a jar of olives and noticed the shimmering liquid floating on the surface? Believe it or not, that liquid is actually residual oil that is given off by the olives themselves.

Solid phase extraction is a powerful technique – it can be used to clean up the most challenging samples, and extract and preconcentrate hundreds of semi volatile organic compounds.

IR technology is a rapid and convenient tool for both qualitative and quantitative analysis that has been around for over a century. Traditional IR spectroscopy relies on vibration energies from the m...

Have you ever thought to yourself am I using the best solid phase extraction disk offering for my application? Or can our prep lab turn samples around more efficiently if we choose a different SPE dis...

“Water in my extracts again?!?!” How many of you have been in that position? You’ve worked hard to extract your samples, you’ve dried your extracts to remove the last droplets of water from your organ...

When preparing your extracts for analysis, it is important to know which instrument to use and why you should be using that specific one. Of course, we know that each EPA method dictates which analysi...

Have you ever thought to yourself I wish there was one way to effectively extract all of our aqueous samples? For instance, there are several methods available to extract aqueous samples, such as extr...

When juggling the responsibilities of working in a sample preparation lab as well as working as an analyst, it is very easy to get caught up in a never-ending cycle of samples. There is no situation “...

Ugh…I think we can all agree that the worst thing that can happen when testing high profile samples is losing an extract due to phthalate contamination. Whether you are extracting 525.2 or 625.1 sampl...

I am willing to bet there have been a few people reading this that early in their careers have had a moment of “what does that mean” when learning new procedures and or methods. You are about to learn...

Working in an environmental lab requires a lot of concentration, both mentally and for the samples that you are working with. When New England finally begins to thaw and local companies rush to get th...

“Why do I keep seeing background contamination from phthalate and adipate when I do extractions for semi-volatiles?” This is one of the most common questions I’ve been asked when I’m traveling in the ...

“Our laboratory uses organic solvents every day. Should we be concerned about solvent exposure?” I hear this question fairly often and the short and simple answer is: YES. But if this were a simple ye...

If you’re reading this and raising your eyebrows, you’ve never had, what I like to call, the “grade discussion.” I don’t mean the discussion between high school or college students who are comparing g...

If you are processing environmental samples then you’ve probably dealt with contamination at some point. If you haven’t, then you should be congratulated for creating the only laboratory on Earth that...

Liquid-liquid extraction (LLE), supported liquid extraction (SLE), and solid-phase extraction (SPE) have existed for decades and if you’re doing organic sample preparation, you’re probably quite famil...

Believe it or not, we’re all familiar with emulsions. Have you ever added food oil to a pot of water while cooking? That’s an emulsion. Do you put dressing on your salad?

Have you ever wondered why solution flow rates are so important when performing sample preparation with solid phase extraction (SPE)? If you have, read on – I have the answer for you!

Have you ever had days of extracting oil and grease samples and thought to yourself “there must be an easier way to work with wastewater samples”? Whether you run oil and grease samples by liquid-liqu...

In the world of environmental testing, many labs encounter extremely dirty samples. For example, EPA Method 1664B is the protocol for extracting oil and grease from wastewater samples. More often than...

When I first saw EPA Method 549.2 only had two compounds, I said to myself: “WOW! That’s a breeze! Only two compounds to worry about, so it can’t be that difficult to extract!”

When you are extracting SVOCs from aqueous samples and analysing via Gas Chromatography (GC), every step within a solid phase extraction (SPE) procedure is imperative, but one of the most important st...

Testing for toxic organic contaminants in environmental samples often requires the following three sample preparation steps: 1) Extraction, 2) Concentration, and 3) Analysis. The goal during these thr...

Welcome to part 4 of our blog series “The Problem of PFAS”.

Throughout my entire life I have always had an appreciation for water. Growing up in the Midwest, I spent my summers at the lake and winters in the snow. As a child, school taught me that water makes ...