Dec 1 2009
MIP Technologies AB announces today the launch of a revolutionary discovery toolbox for identification of new separation materials, ExploraSep4Process. The product consists of 130 different molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) and non-imprinted polymer phases distributed across four different types of chemical functionality relevant for the separation of complex mixtures of chemical compounds.
ExploraSep4Process will be used in a rapid screen format to discover novel separation methods and will be an indispensable tool for analytical chemists in process divisions of pharmaceutical, food and chemical industries in their search for high complexity separation solutions.
"With ExploraSep4Process, we have taken the pharmacophore concept and applied it to the separations field. With pharmacological receptors, molecules with 'similar' chemical functionalities and geometries - all fitting a similar set of particular properties embodied in a 'pharmacophore' structure - will bind to the same receptor site. So with MIPs, molecules possessing similar chemistries to the templates used to construct the MIPs will also bind. Our term for this by analogy is the 'Selectophore'. Simple yet elegant", said Anthony Rees, CEO.
"ExploraSep4Process is the culmination of many years of design and validation of the selectophore concept and represents a product offering that is highly innovative yet simple to use. ExploraSep will take the uncertainty out of sorbent screening and will allow analytical chemists in process divisions to streamline their sample preparation development," said Ecevit Yilmaz, Chief Technology Officer at MIP Technologies.
ExploraSep4Process has been developed to enable the discovery of separation phases that can be produced efficiently at the process scale and will facilitate the identification of separation or polishing materials for the pharmaceutical, chemical and food industries.
"The emphasis we have placed on 'scaleability' of all the Explorasep phases allows us to offer our partners a solution from initial analysis to full process scale application," said Ola Karlsson, VP of Production. "We believe this is the direction separation phase discovery will move in the future".
Molecularly imprinted polymers are porous polymers in which artificial receptor sites are created by using a template or mould around which chemical functionalities are positioned in space. After polymerization the template is removed to reveal a pocket whose structure is a surface image of the template molecule.