The Institute of Pharmaceutical Innovation

Thursday 19th June, 2003 NMR at the University

The new instrument is being used by academics in the University’s School of Life Sciences to underpin research in drug development and to examine the structure of biological materials.

The 600 MHz JEOL ECA NMR spectrometer has a magnetic field ten times that of an early Varian A-60 used at Bradford in the 1960s. It is more powerful, versatile and flexible and can detect several different kinds of atomic nuclei.

(Left to right) Emeritus Professor Derry Jones and Dr Derek Maitland of Chemical and Forensic Sciences examine the new 600 MHz JEOL ECA NMR spectrometer, which will be relocated to the University’s Institute of Pharmaceutical Innovation.

The 600 MHz JEOL ECA NMR spectrometer has a magnetic field ten times that of an early Varian A-60 used at Bradford in the 1960s. It is more powerful, versatile and flexible and can detect several different kinds of atomic nuclei.

It is fitted with an auto-sampler changer, an auto-tune probe, and can be controlled remotely so that experiments on samples can be run out of office hours and during holiday periods.

Emeritus Professor Derry Jones said: “Our first NMR spectrometer was originally housed in the College Lister Hills building – then part of the Bradford Institute of Technology, which became the University.

“The A-60 was so novel in the North that it attracted chemistry academics, staff and research students from Leeds, Huddersfield and Sunderland as well as yielding scores of research papers by Bradford chemists.”

The new JEOL ECA 600 NMR spectrometer will be relocated to the new analytical centre in the multi-million pound Institute of Pharmaceutical Innovation (IPI), due to be opened later this year.

A photograph to accompany this article is available from the Press Office.

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