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The development of liquid chromatography UV and mass spectrometry (LC-UV-MS) assays in pharmaceutical analysis is pivotal to improve quality control by providing critical information about drug purity, stability, and presence and identity of byproducts and impurities. Analytical method development of these assays is time-consuming, which often causes it to become a bottle neck in drug development and poses a challenge for process chemists to quickly improve the chemistry. In this study, a systematic and efficient workflow was designed to develop purity assay and purification methods for a wide range of compounds including peptides, proteins, and small molecules with MS-compatible mobile phases (MP) by using automated LC screening instrumentation and in silico modeling tools. Initial LC MPs and chromatography column screening experiments enabled quick identification of conditions which provided the best resolution in the vicinity of the target compounds, which is further optimized using computer-assisted modeling (LC Simulator from ACD/Labs). The experimental retention times were in good agreement with the predicted retention times from LC Simulator (Δt R  < 7%). This workflow presents a practical workflow to significantly expedite the time needed to develop optimized LC-UV-MS methods, allowing for a facile, automatic method optimization and reducing the amount of manual work involved in developing new methods during drug development., (© 2024. Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA and its affiliates under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE part of Springer Nature.)

The analysis of complex mixtures of closely related species is quickly becoming a bottleneck in the development of new drug substances, reflecting the ever-increasing complexity of both fundamental biology and the therapeutics used to treat disease. Two-dimensional liquid chromatography (2D-LC) is emerging as a powerful tool to achieve substantial improvements in peak capacity and selectivity. However, 2D-LC suffers from several limitations, including the lack of automated multicolumn setups capable of combining multiple columns in both dimensions. Herein, we report an investigation into the development and implementation of a customized online comprehensive multicolumn 2D-LC-DAD-MS setup for screening and method development purposes, as well as analysis of multicomponent biopharmaceutical mixtures. In this study, excellent chromatographic performance in terms of selectivity, peak shape, and reproducibility were achieved by combining reversed-phase (RP), strong cation exchange (SCX), strong anion exchange (SAX), and size exclusion chromatography (SEC) using sub-2-μm columns in the first dimension in conjunction with several 3.0 mm × 50 mm RP columns packed with sub-3-μm fully porous particles in the second dimension. Multiple combinations of separation modes coupled to UV and MS detection are applied to the LC × LC analysis of a protein standard mixture, intended to be representative of protein drug substances. The results reported in this study demonstrate that our automated online multicolumn 2D-LC-DAD-MS workflow can be a powerful tool for comprehensive chromatographic column screening that enables the semi-automated development of 2D-LC methods, offering the ability to streamline full visualization of sample composition for an unknown complex mixture while maximizing chromatographic orthogonality. Graphical Abstract.

The effect of different types of short- and long-range intrachain interactions along the polymeric backbone on the persistence length of a polymer, as well as on other properties such as solvation (characterized by the second virial coefficient), dilute solution conformation, specific refractive index increment, and intrinsic viscosity, were studied using multi-detector size-exclusion chromatography and off-line techniques. The polymers in this study, namely, polystyrene (PS), poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC), and poly(p-vinylbenzyl chloride) (PpVBC), were chosen based on intrachain interactions specific to each, intrachain repulsion in PVC, attraction in PS, and hindered attraction in PpVBC, and also based on a coincidence in molar mass averages and distributions between the polymers. The latter allowed polymeric properties of the three polymers to be compared to each other at the same molar mass and/or degree of polymerization. From the comparisons emerged the effects of intrachain repulsion between consecutive monomers and of the second virial coefficient on chain stiffness and solvation. The increase in the second virial coefficient corresponded to an increase in both polymer solvation and rigidity, while increased intrachain repulsion between consecutive monomers increased polymer solvation while decreasing chain rigidity.

We present a method by which to obtain the absolute, chemical-heterogeneity-corrected molar mass (M) averages and distributions of copolymers and apply the method to a gradient random copolymer of styrene and methyl methacrylate in which the styrene percentage decreases from approximately 30% to 19% as a function of increasing molar mass. The method consists of separation by size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) with detection using multi-angle static light scattering (MALS), differential viscometry (VISC), differential refractometry (DRI), and ultraviolet absorption spectroscopy (UV) and relies on the preferential absorption of styrene over methyl methacrylate at 260 nm. Using this quadruple-detector SEC/MALS/UV/VISC/DRI approach, the percentage of styrene (%St) in each elution slice is determined. This %St is then used to determine the specific refractive index increment, corrected for chemical composition, at each elution slice, which is then used to obtain the molar mass at each slice, corrected for chemical composition. From this corrected molar mass and from the chemical-composition-corrected refractometer response, the absolute, chemical-heterogeneity-corrected molar mass averages and distribution of the copolymer are calculated. The corrected molar mass and intrinsic viscosity at each SEC elution slice are used to construct a chemical-heterogeneity-corrected Mark-Houwink plot. The slice-wise-corrected M data are used, in conjunction with the MALS-determined R(G,z ) of each slice, to construct a conformation plot corrected for chemical heterogeneity. The corrected molar mass distribution (MMD) of the gradient copolymer extends over an approximately 30,000 g/mol wider range than the uncorrected MMD. Additionally, correction of the Mark-Houwink and conformation plots for the effects of chemical heterogeneity shows that the copolymer adopts a more compact conformation in solution than originally concluded.