Hello all, we have been on one hell of a journey these last few months figuring out how we’re going to set up and implement potency testing within our business. We plan to deploy a Shimadzu LC-2050 in our first phase.
We are planning to bring in a graduate from a local college, who has been training on Shimadzu throughout his education. This graduate will be our sole technician. I would like for my business partner, who has a pharmaceutical background and knowledge of dilution and compounding to have a 6-8 hour crash course on workflow before we bring in the technician. This way we are up to speed and ensure we’re ready to roll. Ideally, I want this partner to act as a backup to the tech.
Our understanding is these units are pretty much point-n-shoot once a proper serial dilution has been performed. The tech knows he’s the only “trained” professional on-site. I’d like to have one of the partners to be hands-on with an understanding of workflow ahead of time.
Who can help? I want to travel to you! We will be using the Cannabis software provided by Shimadzu and the ideal situation is to shadow somebody who is doing the same.
There is no such thing as a “point and shoot” HPLC system. You need at least one person who has enough knowledge on how to run calibration, develop a method, and troubleshoot. All sophisticated instruments need troubleshooting from time to time and you either need an expert as part of you team who can do that, or someone on-call who can. You can pretty much train any intelligent person to run lots of samples, but when something gets messy a person with experience is needed to help.
Have you already purchased the Shimadzu unit? What are they charging you?
EDIT: particularly if you are buying and older HPLC, you need someone who can diagnose and repair when the time comes. It’s not a bad idea to buy used, but you will need to replace parts from time to time.
You are going to want to develop a relationship with Shimadzu, they have on-site training, developed methods, maintenance help, and validation support.
At the moment we’re looking at the LC-2050, with installation, a few hours of “training” its coming out to just under $50k. Included is a 3-year service plan as well. This unit comes with everything ready to run, standards, cannabis-specific methods and columns etc… The demo I saw for the Cannabis overlay looks rather simple, but that’s coming from my untrained perspective.
It appears to me that the biggest thing is to dial-in serial dilution and the Cannabis overlay software digests the rest. We aren’t doing compliance testing, simply stepping up our ability to test - as we are hoping to divorce the PURPL device asap. We absolutely NEED a trained HPLC tech and we plan to hire one in, this is to just help us get set up and moving on our own samples.
I’m a moron and have ZERO intentions on working in the lab, that environment is not for me.
The prep work and loading of the samples is what we’re after. Our prospective partner feels she “could” do it after her time in pharmacy doing compounds and reconstituting, obviously serial dilutions are a bit more serious.
Was she doing steriles or just hormones / pain etc? Pharmacist?
I’d taking compounding experience with a grain of salt either way as someone from compounding pharmacy background FWIW. Most of these people haven’t done more than mix a couple ingredients together in a mortar and pestle / unguator. I doubt much will translate to analytics.
Mind if I DM you with an offer to pitch my equipment and setup services? I could provide you a brand new analytical system from ECOM (Analytical HPLC Systems | ECOM spol. s r.o) with the same type of service package that you are being offered such as standards + column + training + consult on ancillary lab supplies you will need, and I might be able to do this at a cost savings from what you have been quoted. I would need to talk with you to assess what your application needs are, and then I could customize the most affordable setup to you. I provide lifetime tech support for all of my customers. Me and my business partners have several years of experience of doing HPLC for cannabis and hemp in-house testing and quite honestly, our methodology is more precise than a lot of licensed testing labs.
I think a full day on site at a decent lab should give you enough time to train someone on tips and tricks to ensure accurate results, especially if you are only using the system for running in house samples. One benefit that you have over an analytical lab is time and volume. So you can run a sample 5x to ensure a decent spread of data.
This issue is not so much being able to run the system, rather understanding what the problem is when they occur and give you “weird” data. The key is to troubleshoot the right way. There are many points of failure that can occur where results can be skewed. But being able to determine those quickly will save time and money.
@Studio42 My lab uses a variety of shimadzu instruments (i-series HPLCs, LCMS-qqq, GCMS-qqq, ICP-MS, HS-GC-FID, etc) and are very experienced in troubleshooting these systems. PM me if you are still looking for a crash course on running these systems. We may even be able to work out an ‘on-call’ contract.