How fast is fast?

Cheetahs. Usain Bolt. Tachyons. The Echo® MS system.

What do these things have in common?

They’re all fast. REALLY fast. In fact, they’re the fastest in their categories: the fastest land mammal, the fastest human sprinter, the fastest subatomic particle and the fastest high-throughput mass spectrometry sampling system.

The Echo® MS system sets a new speed record for quantitative mass spec analysis with the ability to analyze up to 3 samples per second. That’s up to 50 times faster than conventional LC-MS. 50 times! But the big difference here is that there is no LC.

That’s right. No LC.

Instead, the Echo® MS system uses Acoustic Droplet Ejection (ADE) to basically “vibrate” a nanoliter-sized droplet of sample directly out of the solution from a microwell plate into an Open Port Interface (OPI). Solvents within the OPI sweep the sample directly to the electrospray source of the MS system. Because of the dilution effects that occur within the OPI, matrix suppression effects are essentially eliminated, making for a very clean and sensitive analysis. As a result, most small molecules in drug discovery reach single-digit nanomolar-level sensitivity. And time-consuming sample preparation steps are no longer necessary.

Because there is no LC, contact areas required for conventional LC-MS, such as injection needles and loops, are removed. Sample introduction is achieved through a contactless interaction of the ADE with the OPI. Without these contact areas, carryover from sample to sample is virtually eliminated, even when moving between concentration extremes. Additionally, the lack of LC means the elimination of chromatographic run times as well as LC method development time.

In comparison to LC-MS

When compared to LC-MS, Chang Liu from SCIEX R&D sums it up nicely:

“The Echo® MS System is much faster, consumes much less sample, requires much less effort for sample preparation or method development and we could eliminate the carryover problems.”¹

To increase throughput even more, the hardware and software of the Echo® MS System was designed for easy assimilation into high-throughput environments. Standard robot arms can easily transfer plates to and from the system.

With no sample preparation, no LC method development, no LC run time, incredibly fast sampling and high-throughput design considerations, the Echo® MS System is already changing the field of high-throughput analysis within drug discovery.

Don’t play by the rules. Change the game. And finish your work in record time. To learn more about this game-changing innovation and how you too can “Run Fast,” visit the Echo® MS System website for more information and see how fast is really fast.

References:

1. Echo® MS System Product Announcement,  00:52:30

This blog is part 1 of a 3-part series on the Echo® MS System. Read part 2 (“Scale it up! The Echo® MS System delivers unprecedented levels of productivity”) and part 3 (“The Echo® MS System: Is it reproducible? Yes… yes… yes!”).

RUO-MKT-18-12281-A Echo® and Echo® MS are trademarks or registered trademarks of Labcyte Inc. in the United States and other countries, being used under license by SCIEX.