Greetings
I am working on the design of immunoaffinity columns for aflatoxin separation by HPLC method. Researchers who have experience in this field, can you please guide me regarding the nature of the content of these columns?
Best Regards
Most people test aflatoxin with traditional HPLC columns (C18, C18-PFP). There are at least four different types of Aflatoxins. Why would you go for the immunoaffinity column? What scale are we talking about , analytical or do you aim to collect Aflatoxins as compounds. And if so which one? If you just want to test for aflatoxin I can send you a method and columns. What are your chromatographic resources and your skills?
Thank you for your answer Willi Glettig .
I use Mycotoxin Immunoaffinity Columns (Trademark: PriboFast) for the isolation and concentration of variety mycotoxins contained in food specially corn. I use special columns for each type of mycotoxins. I wanted to see if there is an alternative to such columns?
Dear Hoda Sabati
I tried to find info for PriboFast Column. Unfortunately, I did not find anything. The market for the immunoaffinity columns is very small (less than 1%)and used mainly in diagnostics. You want to produce quantities (I presume for making some standards). Thus you need prep size columns. I believe you are stationed in Iran. Your country is under international sanctions. Please contact me through the contact page on my website. There I can talk more about what can be done.
Dear Willi Glettig
Thank you very much for your response. I will contact you soon about this subject.
Best Regards
The clean up columns you are using contain antibodies, and it is the antibodies that are doing the work to clean up your samples. The antibodies are highly specific for binding to whatever molecule they are designed to capture. They generally bind the target molecule in low solvents, and release them in high solvents. Antibodies are expensive because they are not simple to manufacture them. I have toured many mycotoxin labs globally, and the best way i saw to reduce overall analysis cost including time and materials, was avoiding a clean up step and injecting the solvent food extract directly onto the HPLC column. Caution this only works for the less complex foods, so corn (maize) might work ok. But, it will result in replacing HPLC columns more often. It all depends on the cost of your labour amd cost of materials. There are solid phase clean up products that are based on vrry diffetent and cheaper materials but they will never clean up all foods as well as immunoaffinity, however, some types of food work well with those cheaper solid phase clean up cartridges.
The proposal from Intoeverything looks very messy, chaotic, and costly. You cant use it for creating standardized compounds.
Willi Glettig - thank you for your opinion on my contribution. You seem to have assumed Hoda wants to create standardised compounds, and I have assumed Hoda is performing food safety testing analysis. Maybe Hoda should explain in more detail what the objective is within this thread, or maybe you know more about what Hoda wants in addition to what appears on this web page?
Dear Intoeverything, No, I look at Chromatography from a different angle. There are two types of chromatographer 1. Those who experiment and advance the Industry and 2. those who press a few buttons to tho the job quickly. The first group understands the various mechanisms in surface chemistry and molecular interaction. They are also ready to work with new ligands, mobile phases, and column technology. (There are more than 20 variables to consider!) Many try to create value through chromatography. The second group follows what they are being told and they use 85 to 90 % RP and HILIC phases. Instead of creating value, they move the other way, they try to save money by means of procuring low-cost columns. Unfortunately, the saving achieved is often "theoretical" and not real.
During my experience of occupying both of those roles during my 20+ years working in industry it is good that I have developed a tough skin, as well as a sense of being humble and modest. The key word you used there was ‘often’, and I know for a fact, in this instance the accredited food safety testing lab in Rotterdam port that I visited was saving analyst time and money not using clean-up columns to test certain types of food against the EU import regulations for mycotoxins. They instead bought a large number of HPLC columns at reduced cost and discarded them when they degraded beyond a threshold. As you probably know, the profit mark-up on HPLC columns added by distributors and suppliers is quite large.
Dear researchers,
Thank you very much for your complete and excellent answers
My main goal is to replace the antibody affinity column with something more cost-effective for food analysis. Of course, in this analysis, quality control and standardization are required in the next steps.
Given the two answers provided, I will continue my research and experiments in this matter to achieve the desired result.
Best Regards
Here some alternative examples
https://chromatographyshop.com/knowledge/chromatography-method-library/methods-food-beverage-nutrition/
go to mycotoxines and click to download mycotoxins
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