Centrifugation Based Automated Synthesis Technologies

Abstract

Centrifugation is a powerful method for solid-liquid separation. It can be applied in numerous ways to simplify solid phase synthetic procedures. At the same time, centrifugation is the only totally parallel technique which can be scaled up for processing volume or number of simultaneously run reactions, without the limitation of overpressure or vacuum-driven filtration-based systems. We have developed synthesizers based on the power of centrifugation — peptide and small organic molecule synthesizers utilizing cotton as the synthetic substrate and inclusion volume chemistry, synthesizers for automation of “tea bag” synthesis, and synthesizers based on “tilted plate centrifugation”. The last technique was employed in an oligonucleotide production facility with the capacity of more than 10 million compounds per year.