An Enhanced Methodology for Safe, Rapid Freeze Drying of HPLC Fractions

Drying high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) purification fractions, principally comprising water and acetonitrile, is a routine yet essential task in many laboratories. The requirement is to dry the samples to a powder form, such that samples can be accurately weighed, easily sub-sampled and redissolved. Freeze drying is therefore the preferred technology, however, large scale traditional freeze driers may have difficulty processing the organic solvents which can boil out of the samples and damage the vacuum pump. This application note details the implementation of the Lyospeed™ method for fast lyophilization by Actelion Pharmaceuticals.