Verification of Parallel Artificial Liquid Membrane Extraction (PALME)

The Solid Phase Extraction (SPE) technique is currently in widespread use in the sample preparation market. The benefits making SPE technology popular include: Low cost, great recoveries, simple protocol and high accuracy. The Parallel Artificial Liquid M embrane Extraction (PALME) technology developed at the School of Pharmacy, University of Oslo (UiO), introduce a new membrane technology which have the following benefits compared to current SPE: Extraction time reduction (less than half), removal of alm ost all organic solvent usage (reduction to 1/500) and potentially reducing the price per sample to less than 10%. The PALME team have presented the technology for Agilent Technologies and EMD Millipore Corporation which has indicated that the technology potentially can be used for any liquid-liquid extraction. The PALME team is currently about to enter a co-operation with EMD Millipore Corporation in order to verify that the technology is suitable for industrial production. The aim of the verification project is to document the superiority of the PALME technology for the isolation of acidic and basic drugs from plasma/serum, to demonstrate compatibility with plasma, serum, whole blood, urine, saliva and cerebrospinal fluid. These advantages will be doc umented to strengthen future licensing negotiations. The verification funding is considered essential to obtain the documentation required to negotiate a set of terms for a licensing agreement giving UiO and the inventors a fair share of the value genera ted from the PALME technology in the future.