Dr. Georges Guiochon:
UT Department of Chemistry
Preparative liquid chromatography, today's most promising method for extracting and purifying pharmaceutical compounds, is expensive - even tuned to its greatest efficiency.
Like its analytical sister, the preparative chromatographic process exploits minor physical and chemical differences in adsorbency to separate chemicals. But, it works on a much larger scale.
Georges Guiochon investigates how chromatography can be improved and combined with other methods to extract pure chemicals at the lowest possible cost. He has 40-year's experience improving methods in chromatography, first earning a worldwide reputation for establishing records in reproducibility of chromatographic data and the speed at which separations occur - records that still hold true today.
Since 1987 his research has zeroed in on the preparative process, a relatively new method, with fundamentals not yet fully understood. Two kinds of problems account for much of his research - the separation of mirror-image (enantiomeric) molecules and the preparation of natural (recombinant) or synthetic peptides and proteins. Enantiomeric molecules, for example, present an interesting problem. While chemically similar, they differ in the same way our left hand differs from our right. As a result, mirror-image molecules can have drastically different effects on the human body.
Guiochon received the premier American Chemical Society Award (ACS) in Separation Sciences, in 1991, and the 1998 ACS Award in Chromatography. Both honor lifelong achievements.
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