As a peptide chemist, I was trained to purify my peptides with reversed-phase HPLC, just as many a peptide chemist before me. Despite the hundreds of hours I’ve logged in front of an HPLC, injecting samples and collecting peak fractions, I can’t imagine using any other method to purify my freshly synthesized and cleaved peptides.  In fact, you’d be hard pressed to convince me to try something else.  But here I am, trying something new.  Wish me luck!

In this post, I’ll describe my first experiences using flash chromatography to purify a peptide sample.

Historically, solid phase peptide synthesis has been conducted at room temperature, demanding long reaction times and often double coupling to ensure a quality crude peptide product.  More recently however, different strategies have been identified to heat the reactor vial, increasing the overall reaction rate and potentially the crude purity of your peptide.

In today’s post I will demonstrate that microwave heating can improve the crude purity of your desired peptide.