Nu-Chek Prep

Nu-Chek has been preparing highly purified lipid compounds both as individual standards and as model mixtures for the past 47 years.

Nu-Chek go back to times when criteria of purity was based on such things as Iodine value and melting point.

Pure Methyl Oleate was a compound that contained enough inherent Stearate and Linoleate to give the Oleate its theoretical Iodine value.

Palmitic Acid was often designated as pure when it contained enough Myristate and Stearate to give a correct melting point. Before the advent of GLC and TLC, triglycerides were synthesized by the interesterification of what was assumed to be pure methyl ester. The reaction end product was made available to researchers as highly purified triglyceride. Of course, chromatography confirmed later that the best of these reactions never went to completion beyond 75%-80%.

Indeed, one can go on indefinitely over incorrect data which has been listed in the literature. Physical data on lipids even when listed in the handbooks is many times not valid.

Within more recent years, scientific research in the lipid field has made some fantastic progress. Chromatography along with other sophisticated instrumentation has eliminated analysis guess work. Only those isolated fractions which contain no detectable impurities even with large overloads (as analyzed both by GLC and TLC) are able to pass our rigid purity requirements, and in turn are made available to the scientific community for research purposes.

At Nu-Chek their pride is in their product.