Purchasing HPLC for peptide separations

[Jeffetw]

Hello everyone,

Our lab is currently performing peptide separations with a pair of older Shimadzu LC-10 series stacks and a modified Prominence LC-20 series stack. Typically we run high/low pH reverse phase on one of the LC-10s, SCX on the other, and sample processing on the Prominence. The goal is to upgrade the two LC-10 stacks in the near future. For the reverse phase stack it just needs to run a binary ACN gradient. The replacement for the other LC-10 stack will handle some basic column/condition scouting as needed and run the SCX otherwise. There isn't a preference between HPLC or UHPLC. Whatever is reproducible, works without constant problems, and has a decent controller interface on a desktop computer.

I was hoping some of you would have had some experience that you could share (positive or negative) with the instruments below or with any (new) instruments that I haven't found yet. Or if you have an instrument in mind that you think of as being the "best" for peptide separations. I do not have experience with anything not in our lab currently (and an AKTA FPLC platform, not that that counts :p).

* Agilient 12xx Infinity series
* Shimadzu I series (which doesn't seem to be very modifiable)
* Another Shimadzu prominence
* Shimadzu Nexera
* Thermo UltiMate 3000 series
* Thermo Vanquish (which doesn't seem to be very modifiable)
* Perkin Elmer Altus
* Perkin Elmer Flexar
* Waters Alliance

I was attracted to the modular, open source nature Agilient 1200 Infinity series, though I have no experience with it directly. It looks as if that system could be made as complicated (valve and pump scheme wise) as needed if another processing system was needed by our lab down the road.

Thanks in advance for the Hive Mind's aggregate wisdom!

[tom jupille]

If you have been satisfied with the Prominence and have been getting good support from Shimadzu, I would stick with that. Fewer "learning curve" issues and commonality of spare parts count for a lot!