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News: Today at Pittcon: Waters Introduces New Technologies for 2011

03/14/2011

By Paul Thomas, Senior Editor

Waters Corp. today used the opportunity of a press conference at Pittcon 2011 in Atlanta to introduce four key new products for drug product analysis, geared towards applications in labs, pilot plants, and commercial plants:

UltraPerformance SCF Chromatography System: For the first time, said Rohit Khanna, VP of worldwide marketing, there is a UPLC solution that takes advantage of the efficiencies provided by the use of supercritical fluids, “fully exploiting SFC for analytical systems . . . This is not a patched-together system . . . but is built from the ground up from the Acquity system.” In improving efficiency for separations, it is clearly a “green” technology, the company noted.

The product has taken longer to develop than anticipated, Khanna acknowledged, as the challenge of adequately cooling (but not freezing) carbon dioxide to facilitate SFC required changes throughout the Acquity system, not just an “add-on” to the original product.

PATROL UPLC Laboratory Analyzer: A few years ago, Waters introduced PATROL for on-line, and then at-line, analysis on the shop floor. “We are now taking aim at the process development laboratory,” says Khanna. For reaction analysis there has always been, he says, “an unbridgeable gulf between the analytical lab and the process development laboratory—until now.”

Acquity with 2D Technology: The new solution gives Acquity UPLC systems increased resolving power, with greater sensitivity, Waters said.

Biopharmaceutical System with UNIFI: The device combines Waters’ analytical technologies for biopharma characterization into one optimized system, Khanna said. It will be a key technology, in particular, for biosimilar developers, in helping to establish bioequivalence.

UNIFI is the company’s next-generation UPLC/MS software—“the birth of a new generation of lab software,” Khanna said. It’s a workflow focused platform” that will eventually be offered as a standalone product for current Waters’ informatics customers.