A New Era in LC Column-to-Column Reproducibility

Jeff Op de Beeck, Geert Van Raemdonck and Paul Jacobs

The importance of establishing robust and reliable analytical methods is of paramount importance in today’s life science research and the (bio) pharmaceutical industry. Liquid chromatography (LC), e it h e r coupled with UV detection or mass spectrometry has a prominent position within biomarker discovery and quality control workf lows. Among other factors, the quality of the LC column has a significant impact on the data reproducibility and thus the method robustness. LC columns are typically fabricated by packing spherical silica particles into a cylindrical column. Even though column technology has improved enormously in the past decades, batchto-batch repeatability is still a critical issue that can have a serious impact on LC workflow robustness. By using an entirely different LC column fabrication process, PharmaFluidics brings an extremely robust alternative to the LC column market, called micro Pillar Array Columns (µPAC™).