色谱专家带你畅游圣地亚哥HPLC 2022展会
色谱专家带你畅游圣地亚哥HPLC 2022展会
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Four Days at HPLC 2022 in San Diego
A personal trip report by Michael Dong
Introduction
After a hiatus of three long years, the preeminent conference series on liquid-phase separations - HPLC 2020, finally debuted as HPLC 2022 on June 18-23, 2022, at the Town and Country Resort in San Diego. Since the Covid Omicron variant was still raging with international travel restrictions, participants were visibly lower than those in HPLC 2019 Milan.
After Prof. Mary Wirth of Purdue University resigned as the Chair for personal reasons, Prof. Frantisek Svec of Charles U. of Prague graciously accepted the challenging chairmanship with assistance from the organizing Committee formed by James Grinias, Mark Schure, Kelly Zhang, Kevin Schug, Lois Beaver, Joseph Pesek, and many others. The bulk of the heavy lifting was borne by the symposium managers – Janet and Shannon Cunningham, who did a remarkable job organizing all the details in this post-pandemic conference.
Figure 1 Town and Country Resort. View from my balcony window. The resort is popular for family vacationers because of the pools and proximity to tourist attractions such as the Sea World, Balboa Park, Coronado Hotel, and Valhalla Shores.
The conference’s hot topics were decidedly on biotherapeutics such as nucleic acids, oligonucleotides (such as mRNA, ASO, and SiRNA), and “omics” applications using 2D-LC and high-resolution MS. HILIC and SFC are turning mainstream, and novel applications for new drug modalities and clinical diagnostics garner attention.
The premier HPLC conference attracts academia and scientists from the pharmaceutical industry and instrumental companies. The program consisted of plenary/ keynote lectures and oral/poster presentations, augmented by short courses, tutorials, and vendor workshops.
Here is a chronicle of my six days in sunny San Diego with highlights of the four days at the conference.
Day 0 (Travel Day on June 18, 2022)
We woke up at 3:30 am and started our journey in a one-way rental car (Mazda CX-5 with a 2-L turbo engine) to the Newark Airport, 60 miles away. Traffic was light, and we took the air train after dropping off the rental car at the Avis lot. The airport was crowded, and our TSA security check was uneventful. Our United flight departed on time at 1 pm, and we arrived in sunny San Diego in mid-afternoon. I was happy that the MCAS software enhancement system on our brand new 737-Max did not kick in during our 5-hour flight.
While the highly infectious Omicron variant ba.2.12.1 was still raging in America with over 100k new infections daily, mask-wearing was not required at the airport and on the plane. I estimated that only ~10-20% of the travelers and ~50% of the staff I encountered wore masks.
We took the taxi because there was a long line of taxi cabs waiting for customers. Later, we found out why since the total fare was $40 for my taxi, including $3 for luggage and $4 tips, compared to a reported cost of ~$20 for an Uber ride from my colleague.
We checked into our spacious 400-sq ft room on the 10th floor of the Palm Tower building equipped with two Queen beds, a safe, refrigerator, and coffee machine.
We rented a microwave oven from the hotel for $25 to have more flexibility for meals since breakfasts were only available at the marketplace at outrageous prices of $7 for a croissant or $5 for a bagel. Later, we took an Uber ride to a Cantonese restaurant for dinner, adjacent to a supermarket (Ranch 99) on Balboa Avenue, where we picked up a box of ten croissants or six sweet buns for $10 each, 1.5 gallons of drinking water, instant Ramen noodles, and some extra snacks.
Figure 2. The lobby of the Town and Country Resort with a service bar.
Figure 3. Standing with Tao Chen and Perry Wang behind the lobby on Day 2. My hotel room was on the 10th floor in the tall building (Palm Tower) in the background
Day 1, Sunday, Two HPLC Short courses
Sunday was a busy day at the conference, with me teaching two 3-hour short courses. The morning one was on “(u)HPLC method development in pharm analysis,” attended by 31, and the afternoon one was on “HPLC operation, maintenance, and troubleshooting, ” attended by 21.
Figure 4. Teaching my short course on HPLC troubleshooting with 21 attendees. The morning short course on HPLC method development had 31 attendees.
Since our organization, the Chinese American Chromatography Association (CACA), was sponsoring a networking dinner on Monday night, nine committee members and their spouses went to ‘The Noble Chef’ restaurant on Sunday evening with the pretext of checking out the venue and its cuisine.
Day 2-4, Monday to Wednesday: Symposia, Tutorials, Workshops, and Exhibition.
The technical program consists of plenary lectures, keynote speakers, and oral and poster presentations. The program was augmented by tutorials from subject matter experts (50 min) and hour-long vendor workshops with free lunches.
The first plenary lecture was by Professor Gert Desmet of Vrije U. Brussels on “evolution in column making,” which I missed. I happened to miss all four plenary lectures due to schedule conflicts.
Monday:
My first symposium was on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in Separation Science. I attended three lectures on these topics.
· Torgny Fornstedt of Karlstad U., Therapeutic oligonucleotides with ion-pairing chromatography and machine learning building.
· Imad Ahmad of Merck, in-silico multifactor modeling for optimization of 2D-LC.
· Bingchuan Wei of Genentech, Bridging structure and function of biotherapeutics by emerging chromatographic technologies.
My second symposium was in the afternoon on Pharm development, where I attended two lectures on these topics:
· Todd Maloney of Eli Lilly: online HPLC on reaction monitoring.
Tuesday:
The best lecture I attended was on Microscale Separations by Professor Bob Kennedy of U. Michigan on Capillary UHPLC at 35000 psi for separating complex samples at Tuesday morning’s symposium. He demonstrated an impressive peak capacity of 1900 under gradient conditions by using an innovative approach of storing gradient segments of mobile phases in a loop and eluting the sample under very high-pressure conditions. Bob was able to use microLC columns packed with 1.1 mm particles to achieve spectacular performance.
Professor Michal Holcapek delivered the other impressive lecture in the Lipidomics session on Tuesday morning.
The topic was on UHPSFC/MS as the method of choice for high-throughput lipidomic quantitation of biological samples (serum). He used this technique for early-stage clinical pancreatic cancer diagnostics and achieved convincing correlation data. Michal is currently performing clinical validation of the procedure and is confident of approval from the regulatory authority in the near future. This will be an astounding milestone for separation science with a significant impact on public health if early detection of this deadly disease can be achieved and validated using SFC/MS.
I attended the Tuesday afternoon session on Pharmaceutical Analysis. The keynote speech was by Dr. Pete Yehl on “Analytical collaboration for next-gen therapeutics and partnering to create an analytical community.” Pete was my former colleague at Genentech and is currently the executive director of the Small Molecule Analytical Chemistry Department. This was my first time listening to Pete in a podium presentation, and I am glad that Genentech is helping the analytical chemistry community adopt new analytical technologies.
Wednesday:
One of the best symposia I attended at this conference was on Nuclei Acids and Oligos.
Dr. Kelly Zhang of Genentech spoke on the characterization of guide RNA for CRISPR gene editing (introducing many new technologies in both HPLC and MS for this complex modality. ) Dr. Claus Rentel of Ionis Pharmaceuticals spoke on ion-pairing chromatography of oligonucleotide therapeutics.
Dr. Alexandre Goyon of Genentech, who graduated recently from Davy Guillarme’s group at U. Geneva, spoke on separating large RNA oligonucleotides impurities and their sequencing. The sequencing portion of the lecture was most exciting as the US FDA requires it. Alex designed and implemented innovative online digestion using immobilized enzymes from a company called Perfinity (which partners with Thermo Scientific and are available as “SMART Ribonuclease T1 or A Columns”). The analysis of the digests was performed rapidly with 2D-LC/MS.
Awards:
Tutorials:
Vendor Workshops:
I attended Thermo Fisher Scientific’s workshop on “The role of HPLC in mRNA analysis” by Dr. Jacob Fairchild of Moderna. Moderna delivered the first mRNA vaccine and saved millions from covid 19, so when Moderna talks, everyone listens. A 10-min product introduction preceded Jacob’s talk by Dr. Carsten Paul, Sr. Product Manager from Germany. Thermo Fisher Scientific was the top corporate sponsor for this conference and sent a large delegation of scientists and managers to San Diego.
I was going to attend Shimadzu’s workshop on “HPLC and MS for biopharma analysis in process and product development and QC. “ My plan changed since I went out to lunch with Perry Wang and Kelly Zhang to the nearby Cheesecake Factory at the mall. I did meet two of Shimadzu’s new managers: Dr. Mridul Manal (marketing) and Dr. Nivesh Mittal (Product manager). Nivesh graduated from U.Tennessee’s Pharm Sci.Department at Memphis and was running their week-long parenteral short courses. I took a similar short course there on solid-dose processing and was quite impressed with the professionalism and content of the hands-on course.
Figure 4. Teaching my short course on HPLC troubleshooting with 21 attendees. The morning short course on HPLC method development had 31 attendees.
Exhibition
The exhibition at this conference was decidedly smaller though all four big HPLC manufacturers were there (Agilent, Shimadzu, Thermo, and Waters). Agilent had a variety of hardware on the show and discussed their 2D-LC technology in particular. Shimadzu showed impressive hardware, including its bioinert systems and their automated method development LC platform. Thermo displayed various UHPLC hardware, including the new Neo Vanquish MicroLC. Waters focused on their new MaxPeak High Performance Surfaces (HPS) technology for minimizing analyte-metal surface interactions.
Column manufacturers were well-represented (Daicel, Restek, AMT, MilliporeSigma, Mac-mod Analytical, YMC, Welch), and chromatography software (S-Matrix, DryLab, ACD Labs) and a few smaller companies. Of particular interest was ‘Activated Research Company’ showcasing a flame ionization detector (FID) for LC use.
I collected many souvenirs at the shows, such as wireless chargers, battery packs, flashlights, and three stuffed animals. The most expensive giveaway was a box of Lego set from Thermo, allowing one to build a Vanquish UHPLC from bricks.
Figure 6. Good to see Lou Gavino of Thermo, my former rep at Genentech. He is now the regional manager for California on separation science products. We are thankful to Lou for helping CACA secure corporate sponsorship from Thermo.
Day 2 evening, CACA dinner event at The Noble Chef on Balboa Avenue
Perry Wang and I were the organizers of the CACA networking dinner at the Nobel Chef at Balboa Avenue. Perry selected the restaurant, and I negotiated the menu and managed the invitations.
CACA organized large networking dinner events open for all attendees at every Pittcon and HPLC conference attended by about 100-150 people for many years before the pandemic. For safety considerations during the pandemic, the dinner event was kept small, and only some committee members, sponsors, awardees, media partners, significant contributors, and prominent scientists were invited by CACA.
Unfortunately, there was a date conflict with the conference’s VIP dinner, and some invitees could not attend.
Figure 7. Our CACA dinner flyer was sent to our guests two months earlier. The banquet menu was shown on the right. Chinese restaurants generally represent good values though the quality of the ingredient and the skills of the chef may vary vastly.
The dinner went well, and everyone enjoyed the nine-course banquet dinner with Beijing duck and the camaraderie of folks with diverse backgrounds.
There were supposed to be three award winners receiving checks there. They are Yen-Yu Yang from U. C. Riverside, 2022 CACA Student Excellence Awardee ($500 cash plus plaque), and two CACA HPLC 2022 student travel grantees of $500 each: Eli Larson of U. Wisconsin and Zhuoheng Zhou of Vrije U. Brussels. Two out of three could not make it due to visa and health issues. It was great that Eli Larson was there in person to receive the travel grant.
Figure 8. Some CACA committee members: Clockwise. Michael Dong, Wu Chen (NanoMicro), Perry Wang (US FDA), Chuping Luo (AMT), Michael Ye (MilliporeSigma), Tao Chen (Genentech), and Yan-bo Yang (BioPharmDev). The photo on the right was taken with Laura Bush, editor-in-chief of LCGC, CACA’s media partner.
Figure 9. Table 2 lineup – left to right: Geoff Faden and Ed Faden (Mac-Mod Analytical who sponsored our Student Excellence Awards), Nivesh Mittal of Shimadzu, Professor Deidre Cabooter of KU Leuven, and Dave Bell of RESTEK. The photo on the right: He Meng of Sanofi, who corrects the grammar of most of my papers, Andrew Leightner of Waters, and Kudo Kazua and Kosuke Kabe of Daiso.
Figure 10. Table 3 line up. Left to right – Tao Chen, Dawen Kou, and Bingchuan Wei of Genentech, Eli Larson of U. Wisconsin Madison, Sunny Chen of Waters, who came from Shanghai originally as I did, Lou Gavino of Thermo, and Lynn, Tara, and Marc Goldfinger of AMT who sponsored CACA’s Young Investigator Awards for many years. The photo on the right shows Dr. Perry Wang of the US FDA, CACA’s Award Chair, presenting the check of the $500 Student Travel Grant to Eli Larson of U. Wisconsin Madison.
Day 4 Conference Banquet
The conference banquet is always the highlight of the meeting, where conferees relax and meet new friends and colleagues. This year’s conference dinner venue was the historic Prado, located at the center of Balboa Park, the biggest tourist attraction in San Diego with 17 museums plus an extensive garden area, and where the world-famous San Diego Zoo is situated. Prof. Svec gave a short speech at 7:30 pm. The conferees dined on a sumptuous buffet dinner of salad, beef short ribs, shrimp rice, and dessert. It was a perfect ending for my last night at the conference since I had an early flight back to the east coast the next day.
Figure 11. Our conference dinner venue was at the Prado in the center of Balboa Park, the top tourist attraction in San Diego. Our table at the Prado showed Perry Wang, Tao Chen, Kelly Zhang of Genentech, Michael Ye, and two others. We dined on a sumptuous beef short ribs buffet dinner, a perfect ending for me as I flew back home on Thursday.
Day 5, Going home
Thursday was our travel date, and we went to the airport early to have lunch at the United Club Lounge as we had two coupons from our United credit card. Our flight was uneventful, and we arrived at Newark Airport to pick up a rental car (a Cadillac XT mid-size SUV) and drove 2 hours home, arriving at midnight. I hate to drive at night and decide to use Uber for my next trips instead of putting up with the hassles of one-way Avis rentals.
Summary and Postscript
Looking back, HPLC 2022 San Diego went well for me. I learned the latest technology trends on HPLC and MS. and re-acquainted with many old friends and colleagues. I was lucky that my flights were not canceled, and I tested negative upon returning. Flying in a packed plane with hundreds of maskless passengers and dining in big dinner events with strangers could be a roulette game or potluck.
I also learned that HPLC 2023 Dusseldorf is a GO while HPLC 2023 Dalian is likely postponed to 2025. There is an apparent rumor that HPLC 2024 will be in Denver, chaired by Professor Susan Olesik of The Ohio State University.
Acknowledgments
First, I would like to acknowledge the hard work and leadership of the HPLC Conference Chair, Professor Frantisek Svec, and his organizing committee and symposium managers (Janet and Shannon Cunningham of Barr Enterprises) for the organization of this conference. This is not an easy job, particularly under the uncertainties of a pandemic.
Second. To all the instrument/column companies and sponsors for making this live conference possible, allowing us to see the latest in separation science and speak to their specialists.
Third. To the Executive Committee of the Chinese American Chromatography Association (CACA) for sponsoring the dinner event at the Noble Chef.
Finally. To all my reviewers who responded quickly to help me improve the accuracy and clarity of this trip report. My appreciation goes to Tao Chen of Genentech, Alan McKeown of Vertex, He Meng of Sanofi, Yan-bo Yang of BioPharmaDev, Naidong Weng of J&J, Alice Krumenaker of T W Metals, Lou Gavin of Thermo Fisher Scientific, Isabelle Vu Trieu of Waters, Chuping Luo of AMT, Dave Bell of MilliporeSigma, and Laura Bush of LCGC North America.
The End.
Posted by Michael Dong on LinkedIn on 6/28/2022.
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