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Stefan Balkaran successfully defended his master's thesis at the Faculty of Chemistry and Analytical Sciences at the Free University of Amsterdam with a presentation in front of his university examiners (photo: far right) and (photo: 2nd from right) and an audience of another 40 interested fellows.
Stefan asked at AGROLAB Dr. Verwey B.V end of 2023, whether we could support him with the practical part of his master thesis. Usually we are hesitating because we know, that a commercial lab is run completely different from a research institute in the academic world. However, we had an idea for a topic, which was also of great interest to us. Stefan developed under the surveillance of Martin Rijkee (photo: far left) and Radesh Ghiraw (both lab managers at AGROLAB Dr. Verwey) and coached by Dr. Frank Mörsberger (photo: 2nd from left) from AGROLAB headquarters his work with the title: “Characterisation and Identification of triacylglycerol isomers by LC MS/MS”. The aim of the study was besides achieving the master degree, to develop a routine applicable method for the separation of positional stereoisomers of triglycerides. This was really challenging as many researchers in the world tried before with less satisfying results. A differentiation and quantification is of interest to fat chemistry, as it is known that different stereoisomers might have different physiological properties. The aim is to mimic human breast milk by an synthetic substitute.
In fact, Stefan succeeded in a chiral separation and identification of such isomers in vegetable oils by APCI LC MS/MS. As the practical work phase was limited to 6 months, there are some further efforts to be done for the optimisation of the method. But based on his SOP our team of analysts will continue and hopefully we can soon report about the first commercially available separation and quantification of triglyceride isomers.
Congratulation to Stefan and all the best for your professional career!
Author Dr. Frank Mörsberger, AGROLAB GROUP
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