A Year of Innovation
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SCIEX celebrated an impressive year in 2014, launching 13 new products and receiving a number of prestigious awards.
We spoke to Fabienne Le Floch, Global Marketing Manager, Omics & Clinical Research and Hans Dewald, Senior Global Marketing Manager, Separations, to find out more about these successes and gain an insight into the hopes for 2015.
AM: Building on over 40 years of proven innovation, SCIEX launched an impressive 13 new products in 2014, including the CESI-MS system. Can you tell us about the development of this system?
HD: The system was developed in response to the need for ultra-low flow ESI-MS in order to minimize ion suppression and maximize sensitivity. The concept of the CESI-MS tip/sprayer is based on the work of Dr. Mehdi Moini, to which our organization has exclusive access. CESI is the combination of capillary electrophoresis (CE) and electrospray ionization (ESI) by a dynamic process in a single device: the cartridge spray tip.
AM: What are some of the innovative features of the CESI-MS system, and what benefits does it offer researchers?
HD: The benefits are related to the ultra-low ESI flow: <25 nL/min. At this flow ESI efficiency is enhanced such that:
We spoke to Fabienne Le Floch, Global Marketing Manager, Omics & Clinical Research and Hans Dewald, Senior Global Marketing Manager, Separations, to find out more about these successes and gain an insight into the hopes for 2015.
AM: Building on over 40 years of proven innovation, SCIEX launched an impressive 13 new products in 2014, including the CESI-MS system. Can you tell us about the development of this system?
HD: The system was developed in response to the need for ultra-low flow ESI-MS in order to minimize ion suppression and maximize sensitivity. The concept of the CESI-MS tip/sprayer is based on the work of Dr. Mehdi Moini, to which our organization has exclusive access. CESI is the combination of capillary electrophoresis (CE) and electrospray ionization (ESI) by a dynamic process in a single device: the cartridge spray tip.
AM: What are some of the innovative features of the CESI-MS system, and what benefits does it offer researchers?
HD: The benefits are related to the ultra-low ESI flow: <25 nL/min. At this flow ESI efficiency is enhanced such that:
- Sensitivity is maximized
- The ion suppression phenomenon is minimized
- Since no solid phase is used in the CESI capillary, when working with peptides, no analytes are lost in the void volume, nor excessively retained, ensuring full coverage and PTM information in a single run from a single digest when working on the bottom-up characterization of biologics
- In bottom-up proteomics, CESI-MS permits viewing modifications such as phosphorylations (i.e. mono-, di-, tri- and tetraphosphorylated peptides) in a much more equimolar way than other ESI-MS approaches
- The ability to work with intact proteins
AM: The CESI-MS system is part of SCIEX’s Biologics Focus Initiative. Can you tell us more about this Initiative?
HD: SCIEX’s Biologics Focus Initiative encompasses the analytical tools needed in the biologics pipeline from early research through R&D. This includes our advanced series of TOF and 3Q mass spectrometers, LC and MicroLC systems, CESI-MS, CE with optical detection for analytical development and QC, as well as BiopharmaView software, and solutions for applications such as host-cell protein (HCP) detection and quantitation and antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) analysis.
AM: Are there any other examples of new products announced in 2014 that you feel stand out in terms of innovation or application?
FLF: In 2014 SCIEX also launched its revolutionary TripleTOF® 6600 System with SWATH™ Acquisition 2.0 that enables Next-Generation Proteomics (NGP) – the quantitation of thousands of proteins across large sample sets with a level of data completeness and quantitative accuracy and precision that have not been achievable in the past.
Early experiments comparing NGP to traditional targeted proteomics workflows have demonstrated a 30-fold increase in protein capacity and drastically reduce study times. By quantifying up to 90 percent more peptides with CVs of less than 20 percent (a threshold often used to determine good limits of quantitation) NGP is starting to make integration with large-scale biology experiments, such as genomics and transcriptomics, much more accessible.
In addition to addressing the challenge of generating reproducible, comprehensive quantitative proteomics data sets through its next-generation proteomics platform, SCIEX has partnered with Illumina to launch the OneOmics™ Project with the goal of enabling researchers to handle big data, access results from multiple omics sources (genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, etc), and to get more quickly to a biological conclusion.
AM: As well as developing innovative new products, SCIEX also received a number of prestigious awards last year. Can you tell us about some of these?
FLF: SCIEX OneOmics™ Project was listed as one of The Analytical Scientist’s Top 15 Innovations in 2014. The OneOmics Project is an exclusive partnership with Illumina to bring together SWATH™-based next-generation proteomics (NGP) and next-generation sequencing (NGS) tools in a cloud computing environment. SCIEX has developed a suite of applications, the SCIEX Proteomics SWATH Cloud Toolkit, to be hosted in BaseSpace®, Illumina’s applications store and cloud-based informatics community dedicated to advancing genomic analysis. This partnership enables BaseSpace as a single location for genomics and proteomics “big data.” With fast, secure, and streamlined analysis of complex multi-omics data sets, this solution will help advance biomarker discovery and aid research into diseases such as cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and heart disease.
AM: After such a successful 2014, what goals does SCIEX hope to achieve during 2015?
FLF: We feel privileged to be able to work with some of the leading researchers in the Omics community, and we will continue to partner with them to develop new solutions that will be more accessible to a wider population of scientists. For example, to complement our next-generation proteomics platform, we will be introducing revolutionary new capabilities for lipidomics research, based on our proprietary SelexION™ technology. Moreover, with the development of the OneOmics Project, we will continue to facilitate researchers’ collaboration across multiple omics specialties and laboratories thus accelerating the translation from analytical results into biological knowledge.
Fabienne Le Floch and Hans Dewald were speaking to Anna-Marie MacDonald, Editor for Technology Networks.
- The ion suppression phenomenon is minimized
- Since no solid phase is used in the CESI capillary, when working with peptides, no analytes are lost in the void volume, nor excessively retained, ensuring full coverage and PTM information in a single run from a single digest when working on the bottom-up characterization of biologics
- In bottom-up proteomics, CESI-MS permits viewing modifications such as phosphorylations (i.e. mono-, di-, tri- and tetraphosphorylated peptides) in a much more equimolar way than other ESI-MS approaches
- The ability to work with intact proteins
AM: The CESI-MS system is part of SCIEX’s Biologics Focus Initiative. Can you tell us more about this Initiative?
HD: SCIEX’s Biologics Focus Initiative encompasses the analytical tools needed in the biologics pipeline from early research through R&D. This includes our advanced series of TOF and 3Q mass spectrometers, LC and MicroLC systems, CESI-MS, CE with optical detection for analytical development and QC, as well as BiopharmaView software, and solutions for applications such as host-cell protein (HCP) detection and quantitation and antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) analysis.
AM: Are there any other examples of new products announced in 2014 that you feel stand out in terms of innovation or application?
FLF: In 2014 SCIEX also launched its revolutionary TripleTOF® 6600 System with SWATH™ Acquisition 2.0 that enables Next-Generation Proteomics (NGP) – the quantitation of thousands of proteins across large sample sets with a level of data completeness and quantitative accuracy and precision that have not been achievable in the past.
Early experiments comparing NGP to traditional targeted proteomics workflows have demonstrated a 30-fold increase in protein capacity and drastically reduce study times. By quantifying up to 90 percent more peptides with CVs of less than 20 percent (a threshold often used to determine good limits of quantitation) NGP is starting to make integration with large-scale biology experiments, such as genomics and transcriptomics, much more accessible.
In addition to addressing the challenge of generating reproducible, comprehensive quantitative proteomics data sets through its next-generation proteomics platform, SCIEX has partnered with Illumina to launch the OneOmics™ Project with the goal of enabling researchers to handle big data, access results from multiple omics sources (genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, etc), and to get more quickly to a biological conclusion.
AM: As well as developing innovative new products, SCIEX also received a number of prestigious awards last year. Can you tell us about some of these?
FLF: SCIEX OneOmics™ Project was listed as one of The Analytical Scientist’s Top 15 Innovations in 2014. The OneOmics Project is an exclusive partnership with Illumina to bring together SWATH™-based next-generation proteomics (NGP) and next-generation sequencing (NGS) tools in a cloud computing environment. SCIEX has developed a suite of applications, the SCIEX Proteomics SWATH Cloud Toolkit, to be hosted in BaseSpace®, Illumina’s applications store and cloud-based informatics community dedicated to advancing genomic analysis. This partnership enables BaseSpace as a single location for genomics and proteomics “big data.” With fast, secure, and streamlined analysis of complex multi-omics data sets, this solution will help advance biomarker discovery and aid research into diseases such as cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and heart disease.
AM: After such a successful 2014, what goals does SCIEX hope to achieve during 2015?
FLF: We feel privileged to be able to work with some of the leading researchers in the Omics community, and we will continue to partner with them to develop new solutions that will be more accessible to a wider population of scientists. For example, to complement our next-generation proteomics platform, we will be introducing revolutionary new capabilities for lipidomics research, based on our proprietary SelexION™ technology. Moreover, with the development of the OneOmics Project, we will continue to facilitate researchers’ collaboration across multiple omics specialties and laboratories thus accelerating the translation from analytical results into biological knowledge.
Fabienne Le Floch and Hans Dewald were speaking to Anna-Marie MacDonald, Editor for Technology Networks.
