INSIGHTS INTO COLUMN CHROMATOGRAPHIC PROCESSES WITH APPLICATION TO BIOMARKER DETECTION

Abstract

High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) is a high-resolution separation technique with applications in medical research and natural mixture analysis. This study sought to increase the capacity of current HPLC methods to identify and quantify the presence of biomarkers for disease in two ways. First, the development of a mass-based method of determining column porosity was proposed to better quantify the performance of a column. Second, statistical overlap theory was employed in the simulation of synthetic chromatograms to illustrate the impacts of noise and peak overlap in chromatographic signals. Both of these aspects sought to assess the ability of current methods to detect and identify biomarkers present at low concentrations, providing insight into the potential of chromatographic methods to analyze biological and natural mixtures.