Cancer researchers in universities and R&D labs in biopharmaceutical companies study changes in protein glycosylation to identify potential biomarkers for treatment. They typically focus on differences in overall oligosaccharide (glycan) content, monosaccharide content changes, differences in sialylation amount and sialylation linkages, the degree of fucosylation, and differences in glycan branching.

Recently, one of my colleagues from the UK emailed a link to a resource that should be helpful to chromatographers, both new to chromatography and experienced in chromatography: Guide to Sample Preparation (link to registration page to order the poster; a hard copy of the poster will be mailed to you. You can also click the image and it will take you to the registration page.). You can hang this complementary poster in your lab or office for quick and handy references on how to deal with samples.

High-performance anion-exchange chromatography with pulsed amperometric detection (HPAE-PAD) is a key technique used for characterizing recombinant therapeutic glycosylation because it can be used for monosaccharide, sialic acid, and oligosaccharide analyses (Asn-linked [N-linked] and Ser/Thr-linked [O-linked] oligosaccharides) —commonly referred to as oligosaccharide profiling. But, there appears to be a common misconception that there is significant variation in HPAE-PAD peak area response of oligosaccharides.

“Just one more turn.” This has been the chromatographer's answer to the question of how tightly to seal their chromatography vial using a screw-thread closure.

I am sure you have heard of stories that if you add an aspirin to the water in a flower vase, the life of the flowers will be extended. I haven't tried it but I do sometimes use the little sachet of flower food given with a bouquet of flowers in the water in the hope that an expensive bouquet of flowers will last longer. I need hope no longer because here's an ion chromatography study on the role of soluble sugars in extending the life of cut flowers!

Our Sunnyvale applications team recently released a technical note providing guidelines for diagnosing failing or damaged amino trap columns (Thermo Scientific Dionex AminoTrap columns) which are in-line pretreatment columns installed in place of the guard column before a carbohydrate monosaccharide analytical column (Thermo Scientific Dionex CarboPac column). The purpose of this particular trap column is to retain amino acids in the sample thus allowing the monosaccharides to be eluted free from interfering amino acids.

Here's blog post II on the biofuel research studies I received earlier this month. To read the first blog post, click here: Ion Chromatography Biofuel Research Studies (I). 

Xylan is a complex polysaccharide that is commonly found in plant cell walls and also in some algae and is also one of the key sources of biomass along with cellulose. In this study, funded primarily by the United States Department of Energy (DOE), the technique of Ion Chromatography (IC) was used to identify a gene in rice plants whose suppression improves sugars to make biofuels.

So far this blog has focused on drug discovery and QA/QC of drugs, and I thought it time to feature an application on the damage diseases and pharmaceutical therapies (which are vital) can inflict on the human body, in particular intestinal permeability (link to study on pubmed.gov). (Isn't that a great picture of intestinal villi?)

Regular readers of this blog know I don't blog about webinars until they are done and available on-demand so that readers can view them at their convenience but here is one that I simply had to blog about because of how much of the good, the bad, and the ugly of biofuels has been in recent news.