Naming of HPLC Columns

Since the introduction of rigid gels for reversed-phase partitioning in the 1970s, analytical performance for compounds in polar solutions improved significantly. This led to a historic surge in demand for HPLC, particularly in pharmaceutical development. Today, manually packing stainless steel columns with packing materials is rare, but back then, it was common practice to fill empty stainless steel columns by hand.

The advent of pre-packed columns marked a major turning point, further broadening the market. Among the most notable were μBondapack C18 from Waters, launched in the early 1970s, and LiChrosolv-RP18 from the German company Merck. These brands dominated the market, as reflected in the frequent mentions of these column types in scientific papers worldwide.

Meanwhile, in Japan, domestic columns began to emerge to compete with international products. One standout was the TSK-SW series introduced by Toyo Soda (now Tosoh Corporation) in 1977 for protein and peptide separation. Its quality was exceptional. Competing products, like Waters’ ProteinPak 300, often developed voids after analyzing only a few samples, but the TSK-3000SW column remained stable and reliable. By the 1980s, the Shodex series, a line of packing materials and pre-packed columns, was launched by Showa Denko, further driving the growth of the chromatography market.

I had always wondered about the origin of the column brand name “Shodex.” Recently, I learned its story. In the early 1980s, Mr. M, a new hire at Showa Denko, was tasked with marketing GPC columns developed at the company’s central research lab. When it came time to name the product, he faced a great deal of deliberation. Inspired by “Sephadex,” a popular dextran gel packing material for protein separation dominating the global market at the time, he combined “Sho” from Showa Denko and “dex” from Sephadex to create “Shodex.”

At the time, Showa Denko had another successful product line called “Showlex,” a synthetic resin material (PP, PE). The name “Shodex” had a similar sound and rhythm, which added to its appeal. Interestingly, researchers interested in Shodex often mistakenly called the synthetic resin division instead of the chromatography division. While Shodex has since gained greater recognition in chromatography, this story highlights the importance of memorable product names in business.