Applied Separations, Inc. — Department of Health and Human Services SBIR Phase II: 400

Description

Applied Separations Incproposes to develop a competitively priced liquid COflash chromatography system that will rapidly separate compounds with high resolution and significantly reduce organic solvent consumptionPharmaceutical companies annually synthesize thousands of compounds in drug discovery laboratories in an attempt to find new drug molecules for commercializationEach of these synthesized compounds may require many reaction and purification steps for further testingThe primary technique used in the pharmaceutical industry to purify these compounds is flash chromatography and it is preferred because of high sample loading capacity and ease of useUnfortunatelyexisting flash chromatography instrumentation suffers from poor peak resolution and uses large volumes of organic solvents as the mobile phase in the separationWithin medicinal chemistry laboratoriesflash chromatography is the main source of chemical wasteApplied Separations developed a Phase I prototype liquid COflash chromatography system that successfully used liquid COas a replacement for non polar organic solvent mobile phasesThe instrument rapidly separated test compounds with increased compound resolutionsignificant solvent reduction and good compound recoveriesThe specific aims of this Phase II proposal are toredesign the instrument based on the evaluation of the prototype and optimize the instrument components for reliabilityserviceabilityand assemblyredesign software to improve usability including the computer interface and the integration of the solvent pump and COsoftware modulesdevelop proprietary cartridges and vessels that are hand tightened and easy to use with superior chromatographyFinallyconstruct two optimized liquid flash chromatographs for beta testing at biotechnology and drug discovery laboratories before the final design is locked