Microflow LC with SWATH® Acquisition for Digitizing Biobanks What if you could access thousands of high-quality samples for your research? What if these samples were well-annotated biological specimens? And what if they were carefully segmented into just the...
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Celebrating customer experience: Insights from SCIEX leaders
Introduction Customer Experience Day (CX Day) is a special occasion for SCIEX, celebrated every first Tuesday in October. It’s a day dedicated to recognizing the incredible value of our customers and the relentless dedication of our associates who strive to make...
Detecting low levels of drugs and their metabolites in hair and nail samples using LC-MS/MS
You probably have heard of testing blood and urine samples for the presence of drugs and their metabolites. But do you know about the benefits of hair and nail analysis? In a recent webinar, Tina Binz, Deputy Head of the Center for Forensic Hair Analysis, University of Zurich, discussed the benefits of developing comprehensive and sensitive LC-MS/MS for the detection of low-level drugs and metabolites in keratinized matrices.
LC-MS system replacement: Are you ready?
Meeting deadlines in a bioanalysis laboratory can be a big challenge. Older, less sensitive and less reliable LC-MS systems make it even more difficult. Even the disruption caused by the installation and validation can be disconcerting and delay decisions. Does this sound familiar?
Questions and answers to help improve your mycotoxin analysis
During a recent webinar I shared method details for mycotoxin analysis on the SCIEX 7500 system. In this blog i will share the Q&A for the submitted questions that we did not have chance to answer during the live webinar.
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.
Maximize NPS analysis with accurate mass spectrometry
LC-MS/MS is a powerful analytical tool in forensic toxicology testing that can support a variety of testing regimes such as screening, confirmation and quantitative workflows. More specifically, analysis of NPS using LC-MS/MS provides many advantages, including the ability to reliably detect new drugs and their metabolites from a variety of biological matrices.
Metabolite identification and peace of mind
Managing metabolite identification (Met ID) studies is challenging, so what is at the top of your priority list as you plan the year ahead? Ensuring you have the data needed to manage product safety, meeting deadlines, staff recruitment and training, maintaining compliance, capital expenses, or something else?
What has the Echo® MS system done for the pharma industry? (And don’t just take our word for it!)
SCIEX was very proud to have an illustration of the Acoustic Ejection Mass Spectrometry (AEMS) technology that powers the Echo® MS system on the front cover of the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry in January 2023. The associated article—Ultrahigh-Throughput Intact Protein Analysis with Acoustic Ejection Mass Spectrometry—was co-authored by scientists from SCIEX and Merck.
Methods for OPI electrode cleaning for Echo® MS system electrodes
Depending on the samples you are running on the system, it is possible for the Open Port Interface (OPI) electrode to become dirty or occluded over time. Below are two different cleaning strategies that can help you maintain your Echo® MS system and keep your OPI...
Rescheduling a Schedule I substance, and the Delta-8 controversy
Did you know that in the US, drugs and other chemicals are classified into 5 distinct categories depending on the drug’s acceptable medical use and its potential for abuse or dependency? Drugs federally classified as Schedule I substances by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) are considered to have the highest potential for abuse and for creating severe psychological and/or physical dependence. In addition to heroin, LSD and MDMA (ecstasy), cannabis is classified as a Schedule I substance in the Controlled Substance Act of 1970, which means it has no approved medical usage.
The Application of Research Grade MetabolitePilot™ Software for the Determination of the Catabolic Peptide Products of Exenatide
The stability of peptide and protein biotherapeutics directly impacts their pharmacokinetic profile, efficacy, and safety. It is therefore essential to characterize the stability of a given bio-therapeutic including both in-vivo and in-vitro catabolism, thereby...
LC-MS/MS Screening of 64 New Psychoactive Substances Using Dried Blood Spots
There is a lot you can tell from a droplet of blood as it’s snapshot of what could be present in a body at any given moment. In the following application note, LC-MS/MS Screening of 64 New Psychoactive Substances Using Dried Blood Spots, researchers did just...
LC-MS/MS Analysis of Emerging Food Contaminants
Ever wish you had access to the most up to date application methods but don’t know where to find them? The Food and Beverage Compendium is your one-stop resource for research notes ranging from pesticides, allergens, and antibiotics to mycotoxins, vitamins, and...
Is Your Beverage Truly 100% Fruit Juice?
There is nothing like the flavor of fruit juice whether freshly squeezed or made from concentrate to clench your thirst, except when it’s not 100 percent juice after all. As the following tech note, “Authenticity Assessment of Fruit Juices using LC-MS/MS and...
Superbugs, Antibiotic Resistance, and the QTRAP® 6500+ System
‘Superbugs’, or bacteria that have developed antibiotic resistance as a result of adapting to the drugs used in their treatment, are dangerous infections that doctors struggle to stop from spreading. Even common infections such as urinary tract infections and...
Vice President Biden Announces Agreement Naming Children’s Medical Research Institute’s ProCan Lab to the ‘Cancer Moonshot’ Initiative
A key goal of the ‘Cancer Moonshot’ initiative is the advancement of precision medicine, with the goal of making more targeted therapies available to more cancer patients. And researchers believe that the time is right, with the new technological innovations, the new insight into the biology of cancer and big improvements in the handling of ‘big data.’
It’s Time to Enhance Your Food Testing
Are you looking for ways to up the ante on your LC-MS/MS when it comes to food testing? Researchers here have developed a method for the analysis of approximately 400 pesticides in food samples, and their work is available for viewing in this year’s compendium.
Top Five Misconceptions about Mass Spectrometry
Do you work in a lab handling precious samples yet, hesitant to make the move to mass spectrometry? Many laboratories just like yours continue to conduct sample analysis using ELISA assays, PCR scans, and amino acid tests because of their effectiveness. These processes work, so why change? Well, these type of analytical experiments can report false positive and negative results. You have trained your staff, know the process, and fingers crossed, not too many user errors have compromised analysis.
Stoller Biomarker Discovery Centre, Addressing Some of the Biggest Issues in Medicine
The Stoller Biomarker Discovery Center, developed in partnership with SCIEX, was created to develop new omics technologies for biomarker research to understand the root cause of diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and autoimmune diseases. We initially announced our collaboration with the University of Manchester back in October 2015.
Rapid Separation Method for Intact Monoclonal Antibodies (Mab) Merges Charge Variant, Impurity, and Glycoform Analyses into a Single Assay
Throughout all stages of development and manufacture, monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) exhibit a great deal of structural complexity. After translation and folding, proteins undergo post-translational modifications, as well as spontaneous and enzymatic degradation, such that a single preparation of purified mAb exhibits a range of small structural changes, composed of various glycoforms and charge variants, as well as amino acids alterations due to oxidation, deamidation, isomerization, or other chemical reactions. This display of structural heterogeneity can influence the overall stability, efficacy, and safety profile; therefore, understanding the extent of structural modifications has become extremely important to drug manufacturers who continually assess mAb composition throughout bioprocessing to demonstrate stability, batch-to-batch consistency, and long-term shelf life.
Glycosylation Analysis Designed for the (Protein) Masses
A variety of post-translational modifications (PTMs) can impact a biotherapeutic protein’s mass, but none are as common as glycosylation.[1] Hence, the headline for a recent article in Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News, “Post-Translational Icing on the Biologics Cake,” featuring comments from Sean McCarthy, Ph.D., Global Market Manager of Biologics at SCIEX.
The History of Isotopic Labels for Quantitative Proteomics
Proteomics has become a vital tool for biological scientists performing research on the healthy and diseased states of living things. It involves the large scale and systematic analysis of all proteins within a given cell, tissue, or organism. Because proteins are regulated by many different internal and external stimuli, the proteome is dynamic and quantities of proteins can change from one state to the next. Therefore, in order to be of the highest utility, proteomics experiments need to both identify and quantify proteins so that comparative studies can be done, such as between healthy cells and tumor cells, or the comparison of different treatment regimens.
Struggling to Analyze Small Volume Samples with Conventional LC-MS?
The M3 MicroLC System is designed for scientists who are struggling to analyze small volume samples with conventional LC-MS and need to lower their limits of quantitation while maintaining throughput and robustness. When designing the M3 MicroLC System, we...
Legal and Illicit Drugs in Wastewater Detected and Confirmed with QTRAP Technology
What happens when you up the sensitivity and lower detection limits on influent and effluent sewage tests? For starters, low levels of illegal drugs in samples begin to emerge. This is what researchers discovered when they combined the power of LC-MS/MS with the...
Using SelexION to Increase Selectivity for the Accurate and Sensitive Quantitation of a Difficult Peptide Therapeutic
SelexION® DMS Technology Drives Advancements in Challenging Large Molecule Bioanalysis By the End of 2024, the peptide therapeutics market value is expected to reach US$46.6 billion1. However, peptide therapeutics present some of the toughest analytical...
Harnessing the Power of MRM3 for Large Molecule Quantitative Bioanalysis
In a previous blog outlining the advantages of high-resolution accurate mass measurements for protein quantitation using the TripleTOF 6600, it was noted that although the triple-stage quadrupole demonstrated high sensitivity when operated in multiple reaction monitoring mode (MRM), the relatively low-resolution measurement of m/z failed to discriminate Rituximab response from nominally isobaric interferences given the complexity of the proteolytically digested samples (June 28/2016). While the accurate mass filtering capabilities of the TripleTOF 6600 represents one mechanism for achieving increased selectivity over MRM, the triple quadrupole/linear ion trap (LIT) hybrid platform represented by the QTRAP® 4500, 5500, 6500 and 6500+ systems provides an alternative technique by leveraging a third stage of MS, often referred to as MRM3. In this blog, we outline the MRM3 scan function and survey several large molecule applications which utilize the additional stage of fragmentation in the LIT to yield significant improvements in achievable detection limits when compared to MRM.
Taking care of your mass spectrometer—Onsite troubleshooting and maintenance training for today’s lab
Recently, we asked customers to tell us about their biggest challenges so we could customize training programs to meet the needs of today’s growing lab. Without hesitation, most of you said uptime and employee training are your most critical needs. As a result, our...
A Sting in the Tale for Neonicotinoids
Did you know one out of every three mouthfuls of your meal is a product of honeybee pollination—almonds and other tree nuts, berries, fruits, vegetables? To put numbers behind it, honeybee pollination amounts to about $15 billion of U.S....
The detection of acid herbicides and urons by large volume injection
Pre-treatment versus direct injection – that is the question posed in the application note, “The Detection of Acidic Herbicides and Phenyl Ureas by LC-MS/MS with Large Volume Injection and Automated Column Switching.” It’s just one of the dozens of articles you will find within the Environmental Compendium (pages 1 to 4, pesticides) now available for download.
See What More You Can do With 360 Degree Biologics Characterization
Ever wish you had your own team of mass spectrometry experts at your side when working through biologics development and characterization challenges? With SCIEX 360° Innovations complex biologics characterization is streamlined with a full suite of mass spectrometry (MS), capillary electrophoresis (CE) systems, software, and services from SCIEX experts.