Where is chromatography used in real life

Chromatography impacts our lives every day through the products we use. Chromatography is a separation technique used to determine what components different items are made of.

Chromatography helps determine which antibodies fight diseases and viruses. Scientists have used chromatography in the fight against the Ebola virus by determining which antibodies are best at fighting the virus.

Chromatography plays a large role in getting food on the shelves. Through chromatography analysis, food manufacturers can determine the contents of the food item to accurately develop nutrition labels.

They can also analyze processed meats to determine whether the contents use any unsafe ingredients. Chromatography can identify substances within the bloodstream. That's because, in , it was discovered that horsemeat was being passed off as beef, and it wasn't caught for a while. That's when the food industry determined the food analysis methods they were using needed to change. Chromatography became the go-to frontrunner in determining what content was in processed meats. It could even determine if the beef had been mixed with horsemeat, which in turn helped protect consumers.

Unfortunately, it's not just food that needs content testing, and that's why many drink manufacturers now use Chromatography to ensure that each of their bottled products is the same. Consistent taste is the name of the game and knowing the content of every bottle ensures taste is a pro-active method measurement to use. Chromatography is used as an applicational tool continuously in the drug testing industry. Every drug you take that flows through your bloodstream has already been tested by accurately identifying the substances in the drug.

Almost every competitive team sport now tests for performance-enhancing drugs. Sports teams do that through the use of Chromatography. They are now able to test and find out exactly which performance-enhancing drug a player has taken if they test positive.

Also, Chromatography is used for the separation of chiral compounds by the pharmaceutical industry when needed. Pharmaceutical chiral compounds have molecules with atoms that are slightly different in how they are oriented in space. The molecules are identical in every other way except for the difference of how the atoms are oriented in space. It's that small difference that can have a huge impact on how the medicine reacts and processes biological activity.

A famous example is the compound Thalidomide. Thalidomide has two optical isomers. One optical isomer causes congenital disabilities, and one doesn't. That's why Chromatography is so essential in providing consumers safe drug compounds. Oral fluid samples can also be easier to ship and store than urine, although the amount of specimen provided is usually much lower in volume. The quantities of compounds detected in oral samples typically provide a closer correlation to the drug dose ingested, and researchers have reported much higher prevalence of the parent drug in oral samples compared with urine.

Methods have recently been successfully developed for fast multiplex screening in oral fluid, for example screening 32 drugs including amphetamines, barbiturates, opiates, benzodiazepines, methadone, and cocaine in opioid-dependent patients; and for detecting opiates, amphetamines, MDMA, PCP, and barbiturates simultaneously.

Vindenes et al. The main differences were that amphetamines and heroin were more commonly detected in oral fluids, and cannabis and benzodiazepines were more commonly detected in urine samples.

These findings are in line with previous studies and would be expected due to the basic versus acidic natures of these drug classes, respectively. For the full article and references, please see A. Taylor, The Column 10 5 , 11—14 LCGC spoke with a panel of experts about current and emerging trends in pharmaceutical analysis.

Has there been any significant adoption of LC—MS for routine pharmaceutical analyses? LC—UV equipment is affordable and robust, and the available column chemistries allow the analyst to play with the selectivity of the system. LC—MS may also be in use in the industry on a routine basis, but it appears less in pharmacopoeial texts. It seems that LC—MS is very important for the preparation of regulatory files for a new chemical entity NCE : It is significant for the structural characterization of unknown impurities on the one hand, and for quantitation of the drug and its metabolites in biological samples on the other.

This is because of its better sensitivity and very good selectivity. The study of a drug's pharmacokinetics metabolite characterization, quantitation of excretion, kinetics of metabolism, and drug interactions is quite well supported by LC—MS. What are current areas of research in the analysis of traditional pharmaceuticals?

Van Wijk: In general, activities that support impurity profiling offer opportunities for improvement; for example, the improvement of method development strategies, orthogonality of methods and techniques, column selection, prediction of degradation pathways, and interaction with excipients.

Analysis of polar components is of special interest as these show little retention in the classic LC—UV methods on C18 columns; investigation into the use of HILIC separation methods has grown in the last few years as a result. Control of potential genotoxic impurities is also an important area for research. In contrast to impurity profiling of regular impurities, which focuses on the detection of any unknowns above a specific threshold, the control of potential genotoxic impurities today fully relies on assessments.

Although the impurity threshold for genotoxic impurities is much lower, technical capabilities allow screening for toxic impurities based on their intrinsic reactivity, in addition to the assessment.

Although not required, these screening methods have already been developed for alkylation agents and a similar approach would allow other classes of toxic compounds to be screened for. How are methods used for characterization and quality control of biopharmaceuticals different from those for small-molecule pharmaceuticals? Niederlander: Typically, the "purity" of biopharmaceuticals extends beyond the level of identifying or quantifying components that are not the intended active ingredient.

Biopharmaceuticals may consist of mixtures of iso-forms and slightly differently modified proteins that can all represent some activity. Therefore, profiling the composition of these mixtures is an important part of biopharmaceutical analysis in characterization and quality control. Parameters evaluated often include folding and association using spectroscopic techniques circular dichroism, fluorescence ; oxidation, deamidation, and N- and C-terminal heterogeneity using typtic peptide mapping; charge heterogeneity using cation-exchange chromatography or capillary isoelectric focusing CIEF ; and glycosylation using digestion or deglycosylation with reversed-phase LC, anion-exchange chromatography, or matrix-assisted laser desorption—ionization time-of-flight MALDI-TOF , and receptor assays.

Following on from the fact that drug activity results from the combined effect of many individual contributions, at least one overall activity assay often cell-based is always included. Furthermore, the diversity of product- and process-related impurities is generally much wider for biopharmaceuticals than for small-molecule pharmaceuticals. As a result, the number of methods needed to cover all of these is generally much wider too.

Process-related impurities: Host cell proteins are tested using immunological techniques; DNA impurities are analyzed using real-time polymerase chain reaction qPCR ; and individual generally xenobiotic process additives are analyzed using immunological, chromatographic, or spectroscopic techniques. Other: Bioburden or virus-related testing is carried out using compendial techniques; and general parameters are also tested using compendial techniques.

Please note that my focus here has primarily been on antibody biopharmaceuticals. What are the limitations of methods for chiral separation of pharmaceuticals? Mangelings: A major problem with chiral separations is that enantioselectivity cannot be predicted.

Several research groups have tried, but with limited success. This also implies that the development of a chiral separation method is often a trial-and-error approach.