Andrew Alpert
College: Yale University, 1973
M.S.: U. of Nebraska Medical Center (Biochemistry, 1977).
Ph.D.: Purdue U. (Biochemistry, 1980). Advisor: Fred Regnier. Thesis work: Development of HPLC packing materials and techniques for protein applications.
Post-doctoral research: Baylor College of Medicine (Houston), 1979-1985.
In 1985 Dr. Alpert started PolyLC to develop HPLC materials and techniques. The company specializes in solutions to difficult protein and peptide separations and purifications, and manufactures chromatography columns and materials for such applications. Examples include the separation of closely related protein variants and the selective isolation by ion-exchange chromatography of specific classes of peptides (disulfide-linked, phosphopeptides, etc.). Dr. Alpert introduced the technique of Hydrophilic Interaction Chromatography (HILIC) in 1990. This technique is suitable for analysis of polar solutes in general, just as reversed-phase HPLC is suitable for nonpolar solutes. Current interests include: 1) Development of techniques for analysis of particularly difficult proteins, including histone variants and membrane proteins; 2) Mixed-bed ion-exchange columns for proteins; 3) Multidimensional fractionation of peptides for proteomics applications (e.g., the SCX-RPC sequence); 4) HILIC of solutes on columns of the same charge (a variant called ERLIC), which permits isocratic separations of solutes differing greatly in composition such as amino acids and nucleotides. It also affords selective isolation and resolution of phosphopeptides, glycopeptides, and deamidated peptides for proteomics analyses; 5) HPLC methods for top-down proteomics.