The ÄKTA Explorer serves as a highly versatile preparative system as a result of its programmability. It is housed in a refrigerated cabinet thus obviating the need for the operator to work in a cold room.  It is configured with a dedicated programmable sample pump that provides effortless loading of large volumes. 

This feature greatly simplifies procedures involving high volume samples, which include affinity purification of monoclonal antibodies from culture supernatants and Ni-NTA agarose affinity purification of secreted poly(histidyl) recombinant proteins.  A large variety of ion-exchange, gel-permeation, hydrophobic interaction and affinity columns are available for preparative applications.  Multiple runs may be programmed in advance and the system has buffer preparation capabilities that allow one to scout chromatographic variables.