CombiZorb Scavengers Ideal for CombiChem

Drug discovery requires compounds to be of high purity in order to properly evaluate their bioactivity and to produce pure combinatorial libraries of compounds. Solid phase scavengers have been used to purify reaction mixtures as an alternative to time-consuming column chromatography and liquid-liquid extraction, while aiding high-throughput parallel synthesis and purification. The scavengers remove excess reactants and by-products from reaction mixtures.

Functionalised gel-type polystyrene/divinylbenzene (PS/DVB) resins have been used in the past for this purpose. These lightly cross-linked polymer products are non-porous, are often incompatible with polar solvents like alcohols and are subject to significant swelling when in contact with some organic solvents. Swelling considerably lowers scavenging capacity with respect to volume of adsorbent and also makes them incompatible with the use of small volume devices like 96 well plates.

Agilent Technologies CombiZorb scavengers were created to overcome these problems. CombiZorb scavengers are functionalised silica and macroporous, highly cross-linked polystyrene/divinylbenzene adsorbents. These high purity, spherical adsorbents are compatible with most solvents, including alcohols and other protic solvents, which are commonly used as reaction matrices. The silica resins do not swell when in contact with solvents, while the macroporous resins only exhibit minimal swelling. These resins can easily be used in 96 well plate format and give much improved scavenging capacity per volume compared to the gel-type PS/DVB resins.

Crawford Scientific, Holm Street, Strathaven, Scotland Strathclyde, United Kingdom ML10 6NB. Tel: +44 1357 522961; Fax: +44 1357 522168.

-060401-