Turning Waste into Warning: Early Disease Detection through Rapid GC-FID Analysis of SCFAs

Chromatography is one of science’s most powerful tools, yet many of its breakthrough capabilities remain hidden in plain sight. When you truly understand the fundamentals, you unlock performance most labs never realize they already have.

Join Lee Polite of Axion Analytical Labs, Inc. as he reveals a game-changing Gas Chromatography (GC) method to quantify short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) ratios in human waste, biomarkers that may signal colorectal cancer and other gastrointestinal diseases at their earliest stages. Conventional wisdom says you cannot inject water directly into a GC because of its extreme liquid-to-gas expansion. Until now, labs relied on six tedious prep steps, including liquid-liquid extractions and derivatizations at the 100 µL level, sacrificing precision, sensitivity, and time. This novel pressure-pulsed injection approach changes everything. It enables direct water injection while improving precision, sensitivity, and separation simultaneously, transforming GC into a faster, sharper diagnostic tool.

This ACS Webinar is moderated by Bryan Tweedy of the American Chemical Society and co-produced with the ACS Office of Career and Professional Education. As part of ACS’s ongoing celebration of our 150th anniversary, this month we highlight interdisciplinary collaboration. As the central science, chemistry connects disciplines and enables breakthroughs in sustainability, health, technology, and beyond. Celebrate with us at www.acs.org/150.

What You Will Learn

• How to find the hidden capabilities built into your existing GC
• What are the two critical parameters that must be adjusted for direct water injection
• How to harness interdisciplinary collaboration to solve complex biomedical challenges