Improving Aqueous Sample Concentration in Pharmaceutical Labs

Smart evaporator speeds up aqueous samples concentration

An interview with Professor Kiyoyuki Kitaichi, who heads The Department of Biomedical Pharmaceutics at Gifu Pharmaceutical University, describes how a BioChromato Smart Evaporator C1 fitted with 4-Kit adapter has revolutionised its aqueous sample preparation.

The Department of Biomedical Pharmaceutics is well known for its pioneering collaborative research on illegal drugs, pharmaceuticals, and new health food ingredients. However, traditionally Professor Kitaichi’s laboratory staff had relied upon using nitrogen blowdown equipment to concentrate aqueous samples. Drying low volume samples was especially problematic as the method required adding organic solvent several times to enable water to be fully removed - a methodology that took up to 60 minutes and consumed a lot of nitrogen gas.

Professor Kitaichi commented: “We typically start our sample preparation by adding organic solvent and water to biological samples such as blood, tissue, drug products, natural product extracts, and then run an extraction process. The resultant aqueous sample extracts, containing drugs, their metabolites or health food ingredients are then concentrated or completely dried prior to the sample being redissolved in mobile phase and injected into HPLC or LC-MS for analysis. Using our Smart Evaporator C1 it is now possible to concentrate aqueous samples quickly and easily, which was a problem with the nitrogen blowdown equipment. Our concentration process now takes just minutes rather than an hour and eliminates the need for wasteful use of nitrogen gas. The new Smart Evaporator concentration methodology is especially useful for compounds which have a high affinity for water. To further increase our productivity we also invested in a kit (4-Kit) for use with the Smart Evaporator C1 that allows you to concentrate 4 samples at a time.”

Read the interview in full.

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