Shimadzu takes out gold at Pittcon 2015

Shimadzu’s Nexera Unified Chromatography system (Nexera UC) won the Gold award at the 2015 Pittcon Editors’ Awards, presented last month at the Pittsburg Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy (Pittcon). The awards recognise the most innovative products presented at Pittcon for the first time, based on votes by the media corps.

Editors awarded the Nexera UC for its ability to provide a workflow solution that addresses the bottleneck in real-world sample analyses. The product is claimed to be the world’s first fully automated system that combines online SFE and SFC in a single flow path.

The Nexera UC enables automatic extraction of up to 48 samples followed by seamless transfer to SFC/MS for high-sensitivity detection of targets by mass spectrometry. It eliminates the need for complicated sample preparation and enables stable analysis of delicate samples that are prone to oxidation or degradation if exposed to air and/or light.

The system is said to have a much higher target analyte recovery rate and to reduce the possibility of human error during analysis when compared to conventional manual workflows and offline systems. In addition, the product enables the analysis of compounds over a diverse chemical space and reduces the quantity of organic solvents used.

The Editors’ Silver award was meanwhile presented to Waters for its Full Spectrum Molecular Imaging System, said to be the first system to allow scientists to access enhanced matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation (MALDI) and desorption electrospray ionisation (DESI) with ion mobility separation (IMS) in a single mass spectrometry platform. The Bronze went to Grenova for the TipNovus automated pipette tip washer.

Image credit: Photo courtesy of Roy Engelbrecht, Engelbrecht Studios.