Method Transfer Is Not Easy

My wife and I thought we had parenting sorted. But the methods that worked on our first child did not transfer particularly smoothly to our second. With different personalities, different environments, and (of course) the impact of there now being two children around, we clearly needed to adapt our techniques.Transferring methods from one HPLC system to another presents similar challenges: the list of variables that need to be accounted for is long. However, just as the world would be a very odd place if we simply cloned our first child when we wanted a second, so we shouldn’t necessarily just clone our previous HPLC purchase.

The good news for lab professionals (though unfortunately not for parents) is that there are some instruments that allow you to precisely tune your instrument so that it will respond to your methods in the same way as your old systems. To give just one example, only the Thermo Scientific Vanquish series supports both forced air and still air column thermostatting, to enable method transfer from Waters® Acquity® (still air), Agilent 1100/1200 (still air), or Waters Alliance (forced air) HPLC systems.

There are also a number of other resources to help you:

- A white paper to explain in detail the parameters you may want to consider when transferring methods

- An application note describing the process of transferring a method from an Agilent 1260 Infinity system to an Ultimate 3000 SD and a Vanquish Flex UHPLC system

- An AppsLab entry describing the process of transferring a method from an Waters Acquity UPLC system to Vanquish Horizon UHPLC system

Ultimately, however, a wise parent will enlist the help of specialists: the grandparents. Similarly, with the potential complexity of HPLC method transfer, you will be happy to know that you can enlist the help of Thermo Fisher Scientific’s vast network of method transfer experts.