Lab Manager Insights Buyers Report April 2012 : Page 5TRENDS AND FEATURES 1(:&203281'6e; /,*+71,1*63(('e; &203/(7(62/87,216 j LC-MS System | Flexar SQ 300 PerkinElmer | www.perkinelmer.com ease of use in providing access of this data to nonspecialists.” The push for effi ciency is not only a push for greater The trend moving forward will probably place somewhat less empha-sis on small molecule analysis and more on biotherapeutics, protein-based compounds, and biosimilars. Here the selectivity is just as im-portant as the sensitivity. Samples involving proteomic workfl ows generally incorporate many steps such as concentration, fractionation, digestion, and other types of cleanup that were never designed to be put together. In order to speed up analysis of these types of samples and to reduce cost per sample, there will be more emphasis on the systems to automate these steps so users gain not only speed but also quantitative transfer from step to step and much greater reproducibility. Systems are already available to allow for injection of whole-plasma samples for fast analysis of proteins. These systems use antibody binding and immobi-lized enzymes to perform analysis of targeted proteins for research applications such as fi nding markers for cancer and other diseases. One such system, the Perfi nity Workstation, can select target proteins from a biological sample, perform a tryptic digest, and produce a peptide map, all automatically. If you were looking for the metabolism of a protein-based drug or a low-abundance protein biomarker, this type of analysis would complement the LC-MS signifi cantly by allowing a biological sample to be processed, digested to peptides in under 10 minutes, and turned into a full peptide map in 30 to 60 minutes. In short, this type of system makes the LC-MS work better. The conventional approach to this is that a 24-hour analysis is much more expensive and is not as reproducible for quantitation. “Another trend is the life science industry’s continued push for more effi ciency and pro-ductivity,” says Lester Taylor, Ph.D., LC-MS product marketing, Agilent Technologies (Santa Clara, CA). “To that end, with mass spectrom-etry moving into other fi elds outside pharma-ceutical or research fi elds, there is the need for ő7KHSXVKIRU HIŹFLHQF\LVQRW RQO\DSXVKIRU JUHDWHUHDVHRI XVHEXWDOVRIRU DXWRPDWLRQŒ ease of use but also for automation, particularly in front-end sample handling using high-throughput robotics. A further trend in LC-MS is for vendors to provide complete solution kits, which include the mass spectrom-eter, the analytical methods, the HPLC conditions, and the mass spectrometry conditions, as well as a database April 2012 ,16,*+76 5 SGE Analytical Science |
