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LCGC Europe - News Bulletin
 
7 January 2016
 
Top 15 Articles of 2015
Another year of chromatographic excellence passes into history and to celebrate the LCGC editorial team has compiled the top 15 articles of 2015. These articles have tackled the hard questions regarding quality, explored the recent developments of well-established methodologies, and plunged into the nuances of everything from cannabinoids to whale earwax. They represent the height of technical know-how, unique insight, and perspective.

Photo Credit: Claude Dagenais/Getty Images		 Where Can I Draw The Line?
A question keeps raising its head: Can chromatographers working in a regulated laboratory integrate peaks manually? If they can, when can they do it? And when should they not do it? Questions of Quality Editor Bob McDowall explained more.
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Seven Things to Avoid in the Liquid Chromatography Laboratory
LC Troubleshooting Editor John W. Dolan offered his seven cautions for the LC laboratory.
 
Photo Credit: Paul Tillinghast/Getty Images Precision of Internal Standard and External Standard Methods in High Performance Liquid Chromatography
The internal standard method can significantly improve method precision; however, attention must also be paid to the injection volume and the method by which the standard is added.
 
An Open-Source Simulator for Exploring HPLC Theory
Despite the utility of HPLC simulators, the authors found that all the free and low-cost simulators were outdated or had extremely limited functionality, so they created one that addressed these shortcomings.
 
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Removal of Contaminant Peaks in Reversed-Phase Gradient Liquid Chromatography for Improved Detection of Pharmaceutical Impurities
This article presented a method for comparing the levels of baseline interference arising from common mobile-phase contamination sources and assessed different approaches for removing dissolved contaminants to generate interference-free chromatogram baselines.
 
Photo Credit: Arne Pastoor/Getty Images Rapid Determination of 24 Synthetic and Natural Cannabinoids for
LC–MS-MS Screening in Natural Products and Drug Inspection Applications
The illicit market is rapidly integrating synthetic cannabinoids, which have psychotropic effects similar to those of natural cannabis. To deal with their expanding number and diversity, a targeted and untargeted LC–MS-MS screening method was developed.
 
The LCGC Blog: Why Every Good Analytical Chemist Also Needs to Be a Statistician
Like it or not, one simply can’t do first rate analytical work without the use of statistics and statistical models. LCGC Blogger Tony Taylor offered to spark your interest in learning to love statistics.
 
Retention and Selectivity of Stationary Phases Used in HILIC
HILIC is a complex system involving partition, polar, and ion-exchange interactions. This article demonstrated how method development can be greatly facilitated by understanding the interactions that the different stationary phases provide and applying that knowledge to the separation task at hand.
 
Photo Credit: simon2579/Getty Images Developments in Gas Chromatography Using Ionic Liquid Stationary Phases
Ionic liquids (ILs) have become recognized in gas chromatography (GC) as stable and highly polar stationary phases with a wide application range. Having customizable molecular structures, ILs also offer a particular tunability that provides additional selectivity, and therefore may improve separation for neighbouring analytes.
 
Separation Science in Drug Development, Part 1: High-Throughput Purification
This instalment of Perspectives in Modern HPLC provided an overview of modern practices of high-throughput purification to support small-molecule drug discovery. It described the use of reversed-phase LC and SFC for purifying diverse samples in a centralized laboratory setting.
 
Photo Credit: Ryan McGinnis/Getty Images The LCGC Blog: Forensics, Lawyers, and Method Validation — Surprising Knowledge Gaps
For the analytical community, method validation in some form or another is a natural extension of best practice in the analytical laboratory. However, the notion of method validation, and many aspects of detailed forensics analysis, are not well understood by most lawyers and judges. LCGC Blogger Kevin A. Schug explored the knowledge gaps.
 
Challenges in the Determination of Protein Aggregates (Part 1)
Most analytical approaches used for the determination of low-molecular-weight noncovalent aggregates in protein pharmaceuticals suffer from important limitations. This first part of this two-part article, from the Biotechnology Today column, discussed those limitations.
 
Photo Credit: Jorg Greuel/Getty Images Modern Column Technologies for the Analytical Characterization of Biopharmaceuticals in Various Liquid Chromatographic Modes
The recent trends in column technology for reversed-phase LC, SEC, IEX, and HIC for the analysis of biopharmaceuticals at the protein level were critically discussed.
 
Photo Credit: Image Source/Getty Images GC–MS and UHPLC–MS-MS Analysis of Organic Contaminants and Hormones in Whale Earwax Using Selective Pressurized Liquid Extraction
This article highlighted some of the opportunities associated with combining advanced sample preparation techniques with state-of-the-art chemical analysis techniques. The unique combination of SPLE with GC coupled with MS and UHPLC–MS-MS was considered, and this powerful combination was used to develop a novel analytical technique capable of measuring hormones and organic contaminants in whale earwax plugs.
 
LCGC TV
The last highlight of 2015 as chosen by the LCGC Editorial team was the LCGC TV video series.  Two of the most-watched videos in 2015 were these interviews with Luigi Mondello and Giorgia Greco.
    •  Luigi Mondello on Potential of Mass Spectrometry to Eliminate Separations
    •  Giorgia Greco on Options for Combining HILIC to Reversed-Phase LC