Portable capillary LC for in-line UV monitoring and MS detection: Comparable sensitivity and much lower solvent consumption.

Pharmaceutical development currently relies on quality separation methods from early discovery through to line-of-site manufacturing. There have been significant advancements made regarding the column particle packing, internal diameter, length connectivity, the understanding of the impact key parameters like void volume, flow rate, and temperature all that affects the resultant separation quality, that is, resolution, peak shape, peak width, run time, and signal-to-noise ratio. There is however a strong need to establish better alternatives to large bulky high-performance liquid chromatography racks either for process analytical reaction monitoring or mass spectrometry analysis in establishing product quality. Compact, portable high-pressure liquid chromatography can be a more efficient alternative to traditional ultra-high pressure liquid chromatography and traditional liquid chromatography. The compact versatile instrument evaluated here allows good separation control with either the on-board column with fixed ultra-violet wavelength cartridge or for use with a high-resolution mass spectrometry. Significant space reduction results in greener lab spaces with improved energy efficiency for smaller labs with lower energy demands. In addition, this compact liquid chromatography was used as a portable reaction monitoring solution to compare forced degradation kinetics and assess portable liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry capability for the analyses required for pharmaceutical drug product testing.

A Robust HPLC Method for Easily Oxidizable Phosphine Ligand Analysis.

Phosphine ligands are widely used in the manufacture of small molecule active pharmaceutical ingredients, for they play a key role in transition-metal-catalyzed cross-coupling. However, chromatographic analysis of phosphine ligands can be challenging because of the easily oxidizable nature of this class of compounds. This manuscript describes an out-of-specification (OOS) investigation study of XPhos raw material analysis by high performance liquid chromatography (LC). It is concluded that on-column degradation/oxidation is the culprit behind this OOS result. In addition, a slightly modified yet much improved new LC method is developed by adding a trace amount of tris(2-carboxyethyl)phosphine (TCEP) into the aqueous mobile phase. TCEP is also a phosphine compound and is commonly used as a reducing reagent in molecular biology. The trace amount of TCEP serves as a surrogate reagent to passivate the LC column and eliminate the on-column degradation/oxidation. As a result, a much more robust performance is achieved with greatly improved method precision and sensitivity. This is a general approach and can be applied to the LC analysis of many other phosphine ligands in the same manner.