Protein Discovery Announces Charter Customer Program for MALDIplex Clinical Sample Preparation System

Protein Discovery, Inc. has announced the company's Charter Customer Program for the MALDIplex™ M5 Sample Prep Station.

The Charter Customer Program is for researchers who wish to begin using pre-commercial high-throughput MALDIplex systems to prepare large collections of clinical samples for mass spectrometry analysis.

The MALDIplex M5 Sample Prep Station purifies, fractionates, concentrates, and de-salts 96 samples for MALDI (matrix associated laser-desorption ionization) analysis of proteins and small molecules in less than one hour. Sample types include serum, plasma, tissue biopsies, and homogenates of solid tissue. Purified, fractionated analytes are captured onto a slide pre-formatted for use with commercially available MALDI mass spectrometers.

Protein Discovery's staff scientists will present technical information on protein and small molecule sample preparation using the MALDIplex system at the 55th ASMS Conference on Mass Spectrometry, to be held June 3 - 7 in Indianapolis, Indiana.

"The MALDIplex instruments reserved for the Charter Customer Program are functionally equivalent to the finished commercial system we're shipping early next year," said Peter Osucha, vice president of engineering at Protein Discovery.

"The remaining development on the instrument is focused on streamlining manufacturing and improving the cosmetic appeal of the software interface and the exterior of the unit," he added.

Andrea Mravca, the company's vice president of sales and marketing, said, "Some of the researchers we've talked to want to analyze thousands of tissue samples. The Charter Customer Program will enable them to get mass spectrometry data from those samples more rapidly than they could with other methods."