Monday October 19 – Lunch Seminar

Vaast: An Innovative Solution for Amino Acid Analysis
Presented By: Dr. Weston J. Umstead

Amino acid analyses have historically provided chromatographers with many challenges, stemming from the diversity in functionality, and the complex matrices they’re often isolated from. Furthermore, their chiral separations have often been overlooked because of a lack of a unified tool set to perform such analyses quickly. While there are some solutions available, they typically require 2D chromatography setups, multiple columns and mobile phases, or messy and unreliable derivatization steps.

That has changed now with the introduction of Vaast, Daicel’s first-of-its-kind analytical solution to separate 21 proteinogenic amino acids in a single analytical method. This includes the achiral pairs like D from D and L from L, but also the chiral D and L pairs from each other. Beyond these 21 proteinogenic amino acids, Vaast is also able to resolve protected amino acids, non-canonical amino acids, isobaric amino acid isomers, and other amino acid-containing compounds.

This seminar will focus on the history of these separations, including relevant background and previous solutions for these separations, and help contextualize the impact of this next generation solution, Vaast, for enhancing and improving amino acid separations.