Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today introduced the Agilent 1200 Series LC (liquid chromatography) system, replacing its market-leading 1100 Series LC. Used by more than 250,000 customers worldwide in applications from forensics to food safety, pharmaceuticals and protein research, LC is a measurement technology used to separate, identify, quantify and purify compounds. It represents a $2 billion market and is one of the largest sources of revenue for Agilent’s life science and chemical analysis business.

Since introducing the 1100 Series instrument in 1995, Agilent has sold more than 400,000 modules, or roughly 60,000 LC systems, making it the most popular LC in the industry. To protect customer investments, Agilent has made the 1200 reverse-compatible with the 1100. Customers can combine new and existing modules, and can continue using existing methods without costly new method development, revalidation or retraining of operators. Agilent even provides an 1100 Emulation Mode for customers using non-Agilent software until third-party software upgrades are available.

The Agilent 1200 is the most comprehensive LC available. With more than 60 instrument modules, it can be configured for all major LC applications, including a new rapid-resolution format as well as prep-scale, standard, narrow, capillary, nanoflow, and Agilent’s revolutionary chip-based liquid chromatography. Now HPLC-Chips are available to apply this technology for both small and large molecule work, with chromatographic separation or just for infusion of samples. Nanospray HPLC-Chip/MS technology can provide customers with more than a 1,000-fold improvement in sensitivity over conventional LC/MS.