By combining advances in gradient delivery, sample injection, and optical detection, ExpressLC® systems offer dramatic increases in chromatographic resolution, speed, and sample throughput. These performance advantages make ExpressLC systems ideal for a broad range of applications in drug discovery and development.
Pharmaceutical applications
Whether you are performing degradation studies to challenge the specificity of a drug substance, analysis of toxicological dosing solutions, robustness studies for an NDA submission, or long term stability studies, the number of samples required can be overwhelming. With the ExpressLC system, consistent and high-quality data can be achieved routinely:
ADME/Tox studies
Determination of the ADME/Tox (absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion/toxicity) properties of a compound early in the drug discovery process can help prioritize leads from high-throughput screening and reduce the failure rate of drug candidates. Lipophilicity, an important parameter for predicting oral absorption, can be modeled using the chromatographic hydrophobicity index (CHI). The ExpressLC system performs CHI with high throughput and reduced consumption of samples and solvents.
Pharmacokinetic studies
Pharmacokinetic studies present the challenges of high sample loads, low sample volumes, complex chromatograms, and the need for repeatability. ExpressLC systems meet these challenges with unmatched analysis throughput, significantly lower sample volumes than conventional HPLC, high chromatographic efficiency, and precise gradients with lightening-fast re-equilibration times.
Chiral drug analysis
Over the last 20 years, chirality has become a major issue in pharmaceutical drug development, bringing chiral analysis methods to the forefront of pharmaceutical analysis. The ExpressLC system delivers chiral analysis of pharmaceutically relevant compounds in as little as five minutes, with excellent separation efficiencies, and minimum sample size requirements.
Determination of high molecular weight proteins
Reversed phase (RP) gradient determination of proteins has become a standard assay in drug discovery and development. However, standard RP separations for large protein molecules suffer from long analysis times. The superior gradient control and fast re-equilibration times of the ExpressLC system reduces analysis times dramatically, making it possible to analyze large protein molecules in minutes.
High-resolution peptide mapping
Peptide maps are particularly useful for the comparison of different lots of the same protein and for use as the first dimension in inference of the protein's amino acid sequential structure, degrees and sites of glycosylation, and extent of post-translational modification. After hydrolysis of the protein, the resulting peptides (ranging in size from a few to several hundred amino acid residues) are then separated by HPLC and the resulting chromatogram (peptide map) is analyzed. Crucial to the protocol is the ability to separate the peptides with high retention time precision so that comparison of maps does not regularly require an identification step, such as mass spectrometry, cross-reaction with antibodies, or partial sequencing. The ExpressLC system, with its characteristic high-accuracy pumping profiles, is ideal for fast and repeatable peptide standards and samples.
Learn more about Eksigent’s line of ExpressLC systems for pharmaceutical analysis and reaction monitoring:
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