For years, a robust debate about the merits of irregularly and spherically shaped column packings took place. While the dust has somewhat settled to a great extent, tell us what you think. Is spherical the preferred material of choice due to higher efficiency and better quality of separations? What about cost? Can you get equivalent efficiency with irregular material? Do you evaluate both during process development?

Our experts discuss…

The treatment of mass transport phenomena of HPLC between 1960 and 1970 predicted that one needs small particles of porous silica, say five to ten microns to achieve a high column efficiency, and these particles were originally made by grinding and milling larger particles of silica. You lost a…

When the whole history of silica chromatography started, the first high-performance materials, even for larger scale separations, were all irregular. One of the main arguments for the use of spherical materials was always that they would offer higher efficiency.

A spherical material can withstand a higher pressure and thus packing more…

Multi-product facilities are becoming more common in the biopharmaceutical industry.  The development of therapies guided by personalized medicine is driving a shift from blockbuster drugs to niche busters.  As a result, facilities must be increasingly flexible, enabling rapid changeovers and supporting smaller batch sizes.  As companies cope with the challenges of multi-product facilities, what chromatography technologies are at the forefront?

Our experts describe what chromatography technologies are especially suited to helping companies cope with the challenges of multi-product facilities.

What we need to deal with multi-product facilities is a suite of products that minimize the possibility of cross contamination and speed changeover between products.  There are two opposite approaches: a fully disposable processing train or a processing train that can be completely cleaned in place.

A fully disposable train can be enabled with prepacked…