Microwave has been successfully implemented in peptide synthesizers, and is used to heat up the synthesis. While some may hypothesize that microwave has other special elements that help with SPPS, it has been shown that microwave is only another form of heating. Heating is the driver that increases the synthesis reaction, speeding up the SPPS process, as well as in some situations improving crude purity.

The primary downside of microwave is that it is a technology that increases the cost of the system, without added benefit over other methods of heating. Additionally, microwave can cause hot spots and easily overheat the reaction, resulting in a poor synthesis.

The CSBio II utilizes conduction heating on both the reaction vessel and the transfer vessels. This allows the solvent to come into the reaction vessel pre-heated. Conduction heating allows for consistent and uniform heating throughout the synthesis, while also allowing for a more cost effective equipment.

See this case study that was presented by a university at the American Peptide Society for further information about this topic.

For a 20-mer peptide that is synthesized at a 0.1 mmol scale, which yields approximately 175mg of crude peptide depending on various factors such as the peptide length and resin substitution, the CSBio II will generate under 1L of waste and complete the synthesis in less than 5 hours.

The speed of the synthesis and use of solvent within a peptide synthesizer is highly dependent on the synthesis protocol utilized. There is generally a trade-off between solvent utilization and peptide purity; as reducing the amino acid excess, deprotection solvent, or washing solvent will generally impact the crude purity of the peptide.

At CSBio, we advertise the synthesis speed and solvent utilization based on a synthesis protocol that will work for nearly all peptide sequences.

Every peptide has a different level of synthesis difficulty based on its unique sequence and the length of the peptide, where an increasing level of synthesis difficulty will result in a worse crude purity (making it very difficult to purify the peptide, or not even being able to identify the target peptide on the mass spec). Utilizing a synthesis protocol that will work for nearly all peptide sequences will result in slightly higher consumption of solvents, however it will avoid having to adjust or change protocols, and re-perform the synthesis to achieve the target peptide.

The CSBio II Peptide Synthesizer also has synthesis protocols with lower solvent usage and faster cycle times, which can be selected if users are less concerned about the crude purity of the peptide, or have short peptides that are easy to synthesize.

For more information on this topic, see these two case studies: Demystifying Purity, Synthesis Speed, and Waste Generation and Comparison of Microwave and Conduction Heating

The CSBio II is for users that just want their target peptides at smaller scales, and are not focused on doing peptide chemistry process development.

The CSBio II is easy to use, has all the required synthesis protocols pre-loaded on the synthesizer, is easily self-installed by end users in less than one hour, and fits into a small lab space.

It is also the most economical fully automated research scale peptide synthesizer on the market.

CSBio is the only peptide synthesizer manufacturer that also makes peptides as a CMO. We have helped hundreds of organizations that have never made peptides before, quickly start to make peptides in their lab, and we regularly do this for customer as part of the equipment purchase.

Contact us at instrument@csbio.com for more information about the list of things needed to start making peptides and how we can help you. It's easier than you think! You can also watch this free mini-course on how to perform solid phase peptide synthesis, which includes the fundamentals of SPPS and how to perform peptide synthesis both manually and with a CSBio II peptide synthesizer.