Thermo speeds LC-MS/MS analysis up
this week in Orlando by unveiling QuickQuan, a fully automated,
high-throughput software solution for the analysis of chemically
diverse compounds, speeding up the pace of drug discovery to record
levels through intelligent automation.
QuickQuan allows for quick LC-MS/MS optimisation through use of an automated on-line infusion mode and valve switching design.
This enables precise auto-tuning with high sensitivity which, in turn, maximises the successful automated quantification of chemically diverse compounds.
The fact that individual compounds can be fully auto optimized in about one minute due to the infusion-based, valve switching auto-tuning procedure makes QuickQuan the fastest commercially available software solution for high-throughput LC-MS/MS.
"Pharmaceutical researchers tell us that manual LC-MS/MS method development can be time consuming for analysts considering, for example, that it may take as long as five to ten hours to process 30 compounds" says Iain Mylchreest, vice president and general manager of Life Sciences Mass Spectrometry for Thermo.
"Thermo's QuickQuan solution minimizes manual intervention and significantly increases productivity in demanding, high-throughput applications such as CACO-2 assays by as much as 75 per cent."
A multitude of chemically diverse compounds are analysed with QuickQuan and quantified in a completely automated manner using Thermo's Finnigan TSQ Quantum mass spectrometer, important for automatically assessing new chemical entities (NCEs) in early drug development assays such as metabolic stability.
The resultant LC-MS/MS data can be stored either in Microsoft Access or Oracle databases, which facilitates rapid data exchange across global networks, and then be used in a variety of ways to help drug compound assessment.
The constructed database then allows fast and efficient retrieval of information about a specific compound and allows the compound to be used in multiple assays, eliminating the need to re-optimize the LC-MS/MS tune conditions.
Furthermore, to meet future demands for increased capacity, QuickQuan's ability to seamlessly drive the experiment from a central database enables 'plug-and-play' installation of additional instruments.
Individual compounds can be fully auto optimized in about one minute due to the infusion-based, valve switching auto-tuning procedure.
This capability makes QuickQuan the fastest commercially available software solution for high-throughput LC-MS/MS.
High sensitivity is achieved using Highly Selective Reaction Monitoring (H-SRM) and Heated Electrospray Ionization (H-ESI), allowing QuickQuan to successfully analyze a wide range of difficult-to-ionize compounds.
Additionally, new techniques such as Reversed Energy Ramp (RER) scanning used during the MS/MS analysis help to identify the optimal SRM transition.
The use of breakdown curves enables an accurate determination of the optimum collision energy setting, ensuring the highest possible sensitivity for quantitation.
