Separation of carbohydrate based drugs by Flash chromatography

Carbohydrates are commonly found as constituents in plants, animals, and microorganisms. They have considerable applications in medicine when bound to lipids, peptides, proteins, or even nucleic acids. Amino glycoside antibiotics, glycodrugs, and glyco-conjugate vaccines from carbohydrates have been of high interest in the medicinal field due to their therapeutic effects. Besides their clinical importance in glycomics, synthesizing and purifying carbohydrate-based compounds is a challenge to synthetic chemists. They lack chromophores and therefore can`t be monitored by UV detection. The example below shows the successful separation of Acarbose on a Pure Flash system and FlashPure Amino cartridges. Acarbose is an inhibitor of α-glucosidase, which is used in the treatment of diabetic patients due to its significant effect in lowering blood glucose. The Pure detection technology allows to simultaneously use UV and ELSD (Evaporative Light Scattering detection) and therefore to purify even non-chromophoric compounds.