We know that antibiotics used to treat livestock can end up in the food we eat. Routine food testing labs are essential for detecting compounds, like these, that can be dangerous to our health. Antibiotic residues include both parent molecules and metabolites left...
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6 Signs it’s time for a new vendor
A lab’s success depends on many factors from instrument quality to efficient operations, including being partnered with the right vendor. A vendor is more than just a supplier. They should provide you with a high-level quality of support in maximizing the lifespan and performance of your systems, reducing downtime, enhancing ROI and more. How do you know if you’re partnered with the right one? Here are six signs it might be time to find someone new.
Selecting an LC-MS system for quantitation of pharmaceutical drug development
We understand you are busy, needing to prioritize running instruments, reporting results and managing your laboratory to meet deadlines. We created a solution guide to explain how SCIEX systems fit in the drug development pipeline to save you time evaluating options.
Your success and voice go a long way!
At the heart of everything we do is ensuring that your workflows and team are empowered to achieve optimal results with your SCIEX instruments, software, consumables, and services. Every interaction with SCIEX is designed to support your success through the dedication...
Guide decisions during cell line development with more information at the intact level
Monitoring product quality attributes (PQAs) throughout monoclonal antibody (mAb) development is vital to ensuring drug safety and efficacy. By adopting orthogonal analytical techniques and integrating new technologies that have the potential to provide more information, it is possible to improve product quality and manufacturing efficiency and make more informed decisions.
Breaking down the SCIEX Triple Quad™ 7500 LC-MS/MS System – QTRAP® Ready
Sensitivity and robustness carry different meanings in the world of mass spectrometry. Generally, sensitivity refers to an instrument’s ability to achieve lower limits of detection (LOD). Robustness, on the other hand, refers to an instrument’s ability to consistently...
The honey sting
As a consumer it’s hard for me not to feel inundated with claims that our food is “all-natural” or “chemical-free” or that we should buy certain “superfoods” for their health benefits. We read labels and trust that the product we are buying is what we are truly...
Innovation that’s blasting through limitations in explosive detection
Mass spectrometry’s important role in identifying explosives The need for rapid explosive detection is now an unfortunate reality. The remit is multifaceted. The first is for preventative purposes, to protect us from any threat to life. The second is in the...
A new generation of therapeutic modalities
There are over 7,000 genetic diseases that could potentially be cured using gene therapy. Rare metabolic diseases, autoimmune disorders, cardiovascular disease and cancers are some of the top disease classes that can be addressed with gene therapies. With over 1,000...
Enhancing Biologics with CESI-MS Characterization
Comprehensive characterization of a biologic requires analysis at both the intact and digest levels, but these analyses can be complex and cumbersome. For example, with conventional liquid chromatography separations, researchers are often left with limited information...
Full, partial and empty capsid ratios for AAV analysis: What’s the big deal?
For many of you working to develop gene therapy drugs, you know that the time to market the drug is critical. Because gene therapeutics cure diseases by targeting specific genes, it is a constant race to see who develops the drug first. Unlike other classes of drugs where multiple medications can be used to treat a disease, whoever is first to develop a gene therapy drug wins.
3 Workflows Designed to Accelerate Your Biologics Characterization
Biopharmaceutical development is booming and now an integral part of many pharmaceutical company pipelines. While these emerging biologics present exciting opportunities for the industry, their sophistication is challenging the limits of characterization at all stages of discovery and development.
Making Your Vitamin D Testing Dreams Come True
If you work in clinical diagnostics, you can probably confirm that most clinical laboratories have seen a 5 to 6-fold increase in 25-hydroxyvitamin D testing over the past decade, and volume is growing. Furthermore, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently reported Vitamin D as one of the top five laboratory assays reimbursed by Medicare, accounting for 8.7 million laboratory tests and $337 million in reimbursement dollars.
The Science Behind SelexION Differential Mobility Spectrometry Technology
Scientists and analysts across all fields of testing and research are increasingly challenged by complex samples requiring advanced analytical selectivity. And where LC-MS/MS sensitivity alone is not enough to meet the demands of modern day quantitative performance, Differential Ion Mobility Spectrometry (DMS) has proven to be a valuable addition.
Elimination of Interference using the SelexION Differential Mobility System for the Quantitation of Rituximab in a Dual Surrogate Peptide Approach
The quantitation of proteins using the surrogate peptide approach can complicate nominal mass Triple Quadrupole MRM measurements due to co-extracted interference when using non-selective extraction techniques such as pellet digestion. High resolution coupled with accurate mass filtering can mitigate such interference, as reported previously for the determination of rituximab using the TripleTOF 6600 (Protein Quant Approaches). However, an additional level of selectivity can often be achieved on nominal mass systems using the orthogonal gas-phase separation approach offered by the SelexION+® Differential Mobility System technology (DMS). Interfaced between the sampling orifice and ion source, the DMS separates ions based upon differences in their migration rates under alternating low and high field waveform amplitudes (Figure 1). Ion clustering in low fields and declustering in high fields amplifies the distinction in mobility of an ion, resulting in improved resolution from interfering species of differing molecular cross-section.1-4
Happy Birthday to SWATH Acquisition! 5 Years of Innovation
With its introduction at the HUPO World Congress in 2010 in Sydney Australia by Ruedi Aebersold, SWATH® Acquisition instantly intrigued scientists around the world. Here was a new technique with the potential to revolutionize the way proteomics studies were performed! Based on a data independent acquisition strategy using a SCIEX TripleTOF® 5600 system, SWATH was able to consistently identify and quantify at least as many peptides and proteins as other far more mature proteomics strategies on the market, but with quantitative accuracy and reproducibility rivaling gold standard MRM experiments! This solution was made broadly available to researchers with a full launch of SWATH Acquisition in the Analyst® TF 1.6 Software on the TripleTOF 5600+ System at ASMS 2012 in Vancouver (A Mine of Quantitative Proteomic Information. Prof Dr. Ruedi Aebersold, Head of the Department of Biology, ETH Zurich).
5 Tips for Calibrating a QTOF Mass Spectrometer
Do you have questions about your mass spec? How about a workflow? Our community members are involved in active discussions and receive expert answers from customers like you, SCIEX scientists, and support specialists every week. One recent topic concerned the automatic calibration on TripleTOF® systems as answered by Dr. Christie Hunter whose focus is developing and testing innovative MS workflows for omics research through working collaboratively with the instrument, chemistry, and software research groups.
Enhancing In Vitro ADME Screening
LC-MS technology is helping contract research organization Cyprotex Discovery Ltd. perform bioanalysis of small molecules, peptides, and other pharmaceuticals, enabling quantification to be performed in complex matrices during in vitro ADME studies.
Host Cell Protein Analysis – Mass Spec’s Edge Over ELISA
The number of protein based drugs coming onto the market is at an all-time high, particularly those produced with a host cell system. With host cells come their own proteins. These host cell proteins (HCPs) constitute a major part of process-related impurities and can adversely affect drug safety, so it is critical that they are identified and quantified accurately.
Fipronil Tainted Eggs Detected in Several European Countries
News agencies all over the world are reporting a new food contamination issue regarding eggs which have been found to contain residues of Fipronil. According to Nieuwsuur, a Dutch news, and current affairs program, “The Fipronil scandal is a huge blow to the poultry sector. Millions of eggs are destroyed and 138 companies remain tentatively closed. But supermarkets also face great damage. In recent days all contaminated eggs have been taken out of the shelves.” CBS news has reported that contaminated eggs have been discovered in Belgium and in the Netherlands with other European countries now on alert.
In Search of the Unknown
The production of high-quality drinking water entails rigorous treatment and testing procedures. For water suppliers’ laboratories, such as the Zweckverband Landeswasserversorgung in Germany, one of the major challenges is the identification of trace levels of organic substances, which can be achieved with the help of mass spectrometry.
A Fleet of Analyzers Keeps Work Flowing
An Interview with Timothy Sangster, Head of Bioanalysis and Immunology, Charles River Laboratories, Edinburgh
Designed Specifically for Your Clinical Lab—Mass Spec Made Simple
Welcome to the first post in our clinical diagnostic blog series. Our ambition is to become your single destination for everything mass spec in the clinical diagnostic lab. To make this blog as useful as possible for you, we invite you to tell us what topics you would like us to cover. Please comment on this blog below and let us know what you’d like to hear!
Is Your Lab Prepared for Testing? The Global Supplement Market is Growing
Don’t judge a nutritional supplement by its label, as often, government monitoring of ingredients begins after the product enters the consumer market1. Meanwhile, there may be additional additives not mentioned on the label as they are used to address supplement side effects. Such is the case in the United States where even though federal law requires supplements to carry a dietary supplement label or a substitutional term, monitoring begins once a supplement is on the market. In China meanwhile, the China Food and Drug Administration’s (CFDA) health product potential illegal additives list, clearly stipulates monitoring processes for additives in six different types of nutritional supplements including weight loss, blood sugar reduction, blood pressure reduction, anti-fatigue, sleep improvement and immune strengthening functions.Read Tech Note >
How to Detect Additives in Cosmetics Amongst Ever Changing Regulations
In today’s technical blog, I’m talking about the cosmetics industry so let’s get right to it. According to a Research and Market report, “The Global Cosmetic market was $460 billion USD in 2014 and is estimated to reach 675 billion USD by 2020, growing at a rate of 6.4%.”1 The U.S. leads the pack with a reported $62 billion in revenue earned in 20162. So, what am I getting at? We know earnings are strong and consumers like their products. But the question remains, are these products that you put on your skin, hair, and ingest safe? Such is the thinking of scientists like me and other chemists who are routinely tasked with detecting minimal levels of potentially harmful ingredients in personal care products against ever-changing global regulations.
A Mine of Quantitative Proteomic Information
The Aebersold group at ETH Zurich focuses on proteomics research, including the development of techniques to study the proteome as an integrated entity. In collaboration with SCIEX, the group established SWATH® Acquisition mass spectrometry, a data-independent acquisition (DIA) method capable of fragmenting multiple peptide species concurrently. The resulting comprehensive data set can be retrospectively re-mined, enabling maximum benefit to be derived from any study.
Delivering New Biologics to the Marketplace
Characterization and quantification of host cell proteins (HCPs) in biopharmaceutical development and manufacturing is a critical step to ensuring product safety. While this can be achieved using ELISA, mass spectrometry using the SCIEX TripleTOF® 6600 System is more specific and enables the identification and quantitation of each of the individual proteins present.
Speeding the Development of Quantitative Biosimilar Assays
When developing new quantitative assays for Biotherapeutics, every biologic requires a specific sample prep strategy, which includes sourcing reagents and research protocols. However, as every bioanalytical lab knows all too well, it can also take up to two months to develop an optimized and robust LC-MS assay. For this reason, researchers understandably want an easier way to develop highly sensitive and specific assays for biotherapeutics and biosimilars to accelerate sample turnaround time.
The Benefits of Using SWATH Acquisition Technology when Testing Pesticides in Food
Up until recently, SWATH® Independent Data Acquisition (IDA), was not widely used for the detection of pesticides in food samples. Introduced in 2012, SWATH Acquisition is an advanced acquisition technology capable of running on high-resolution mass spectrometers such as the X500R QTOF system or Triple TOF technology. Originally used in the Omics market to ID and quantify complex samples, SWATH Acquisition is gradually making a transition across markets including the investigation of pesticides in food. Like designer drugs, pesticides continuously undergo synthesizing, and food labs are beginning to require a more reliable analysis method to be confident in their resulting reports.
Single Injection, Routine Antibiotic Testing in Urine Samples
The consumption of pharmaceuticals and personal care products is a day to day occurrence. Once consumed the body excretes the remaining part of the compound which is not absorbed. This waste, flushed down the toilet, makes its way through the sewage system before arriving at a treatment facility where it was then processed with chemicals to ensure its cleanliness. Despite being washed, there can remain trace amounts of bacteria, hormones, metals, and antibiotics in whatever you consume, not just water
Do You Want to Accelerate Quantitative Assays for Antibody Drug Conjugates?
Are you tasked with the bioanalysis of antibody drug conjugates (ADCs)? If so, you know they represent a rapidly growing class of biotherapeutics, but their unique chemical structure makes quantitative analysis particularly challenging.