Shimadzu has launched the Nexera Preparative Supercritical Fluid Chromatography System, developed in partnership with the Enabling Technologies Consortium (ETC). ETC is a consortium of 10 American pharmaceutical companies, and Nexera UC Prep is designed to fit into their preparative purification workflow.
The system is part of Shimadzu Nexera UC platform, which accommodates various analyses and purifications. The platform is based around the Nexera ultra high-performance liquid chromatograph. Each system is configurable to user specifications to optimise the desired purification function including chiral or achiral purifications, single injections, stacked injections, and fraction collections from several microliters to litres.
Nexera UC Prep is designed to reduce the need for costly and hazardous solvents used in normal phase prep LC, while shortening purification run time and dry down time. It features a flexible format combination injector/fraction collector, CO2 pump with integrated chiller requiring less lab space and allowing for benchtop use, a gas-liquid separator design, LotusStream, to ensure high recovery and low carryover, and preparative software to streamline operations.
The recently designed ‘LotusStream’ gas liquid separator realises a higher recovery ratio and lower carryover than earlier SFC systems. Moreover, the design of the separator reduces the total size of the recovery system and allows for easy rinsing compared to earlier cyclone-style or centrifugal type gas-liquid separating systems.
“The Nexera UC Prep system is an improved purification instrumentation that meets the specifications and requirements from SFC users across the pharmaceutical industry,” said Mirlinda Biba, PhD, Principal Scientist, Merck, and ETC lead for this project. “This new generation system provides improved hardware and software features that answer the pharmaceutical industry’s demand for an efficient and robust prep SFC system.”
“Working with the Enabling Technologies Consortium, and hearing the voice of the pharmaceutical industry, has been an incredibly valuable learning experience for us at Shimadzu,” said Patrick Fromal, VP Sales, Shimadzu Scientific Instruments. “Their insight into what’s truly needed by the industry drove this project forward, and we are very grateful for the opportunity to work with such an amazing team.”
