I am Adrian Wünsche, a young scientist at the Helmoltz Zentrum Dresden Rossendorf (HZDR), and I am a Ph.D. student beginning my work in the Institute of Radiopharmaceutical Cancer Research under the supervision of Prof. Jens Pietzsch.
Tell me about your background.
In 2014, I started to study Molecular Science at the Friedrich- Alexander University in Erlangen. After finishing my basic studies, it was obvious to me that I would do a Ph.D., so I moved to Dresden to work at the HZDR. I feel that the HZDR is a special environment because here we apply organic chemistry to applications in cellular and radiometric assays, and we take the development of drugs through many research steps which accelerates the research process and maintains a high level of quality. This, combined with a passion for natural sciences and an atmosphere of cooperation, leads to fascinating results.
Tell me about your work.
My goal is to synthesize a new chelator for radioisotopic copper that can be easily added to a vector. Essentially, I am both an organic and inorganic chemist, and I spend most of my time developing bispidine derivatives that can be used for complex- ation of copper 64 or 67. Such compounds enable us to combine therapy and diagnostic approaches for cancer research, especially for detecting and then treatment of multiple myeloma in relapsed/refractory patients.
"The Biotage Selekt is used as replacement for manual columns, allowing us to make large savings in time, waste and costs. " – Adrian Wünche, HZDR
Apart from the product, what made you choose Biotage?
Biotage is a Global Impact Tech Company committed to serving the needs of chemists in the laboratory; this mission statement fits the goals of the HZDR really well. Similarly to HZDR, Biotage wants to make the world a better place by aiming to reduce waste and improving the performance of laboratories to achieve faster results. Also, experience has taught us that Biotage excels in terms of cost and quality. These were most likely the reasons why the Biotage Selekt was already the standard flash purification system before I started my Ph.D.
Why do you need a product like this?
The Biotage Selekt is used as replacement for manual columns, allowing us to make large savings in time, waste and costs. Moreover, as we are working with many kind of dyes which are water soluble due to various functional groups, big batches can be purified easily by the Selekt using C18-columns, instead of having to resort to reversed phase preparative HPLC with low loadings and very long runtimes.
Give me some examples of things this product does really well.
The Biotage Selekt is an important system for us because it allows the rapid purification of reaction products using standard methods. With the instrument it is possible to run
over 10 columns a day compared to standard column chroma- tography, which means that we can perform reactions in smaller volumes for screening and functional performance verifica- tions. Another advantage is that the solvent volumes used
are minimized, reducing the cost per purification. Moreover, now manually packing columns is no longer necessary, as pre-packed Sfär columns are commercially available and lead to reproducible results. Additionally, the Sfär reversed C18 column can be used several times, which increases their cost efficiency.
How does this product compare to similar products on the market?
When selecting a flash purification system, we compared the Biotage Selekt with offerings from other manufacturers and found that the cost and performance of the Biotage device and consumables to be better. Furthermore, Biotage customer service is fast and reliable, and overall the system runs smoothly without any breakdowns over a long period. Compared to some systems, the Biotage Selekt excels with its robust fibre optics-based photodiode array detector, which allows for sensitive photometric monitoring at two distinct wavelengths and the integrated absorption in the range of 198-810 nm. During my Master thesis I used the a different system which gave the same results, however I found the interface was more complex compared to the one of Biotage, which is more user-friendly.
"When selecting a flash purification system, we compared the Biotage Selekt with offerings from other manufacturers and found that the cost and performance of the Biotage device and consumables to be better. ” – Adrian Wünche, HZDR
Literature Number: PPS656
