Agilent Announces Opening of Life Science Research Center

Agilent Technologies Inc. has announced the opening of a new center for life science research in partnership with Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.

The Carleton Mass Spectrometry Center, located in the university's department of chemistry, is equipped with mass spectrometers, gas and liquid chromatography systems, and bioinformatics tools from Agilent.

"This partnership will enable Agilent to develop new innovative mass spectrometry-based omics workflows for life science research," said Agilent's Steve Fischer, marketing director, Academia and Government. "It will make possible new biological discoveries using integrated biology to understand the mechanisms of disease."

Agilent tools make it easier for scientists to combine, analyze and visualize data from experiments in genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics and lipidomics.

The Carleton Mass Spectrometry Center will be an analytical resource for researchers and industrial partners across Canada.

"Scientists will be able to use the sophisticated technologies in our center to advance their research into small molecules, proteomics, metabolomics and lipidomics," said Dr. Jeffrey Smith, associate professor, Department of Chemistry, Carleton University. "With advanced instrumentation and application support from Agilent, we hope to promote new discoveries in biochemistry with the potential to transform medicine, agriculture and industry."

The center is using a new analytical method developed by two of the university's professors, Jeff Smith and Jeff Manthorpe. The new method, known as TrEnDi (trimethylation enhancement using diazomethane), increases the sensitivity of mass spectrometry analyses by assigning a fixed, permanent positive charge to amino groups. It allows for increased sequence coverage and peptide detection in proteomics analyses, and better detection in metabolomics and lipidomics analyses.