Agilent, Baylor Open Mass Spec Center of Excellence

Agilent Technologies Inc. and Baylor College of Medicine, both known for their expertise in metabolomics, are working together to advance research and training in this vital branch of the life sciences.

To that end, Agilent and Baylor have opened the Agilent Technologies Mass Spectrometry Center of Excellence as part of the Alkek Center for Molecular Discovery and the Baylor College of Medicine Core Laboratory in the college's department of molecular and cellular biology.

"Our collaborative relationship with Baylor and our shared investment in this new center will foster development of advanced research tools and new applications in metabolomics and integrated biology," said Carl Raimond, Agilent vice president of Sales and Field Operations, Americas Life Sciences. Dr. Bert O'Malley, director of the Alkek Center for Molecular Discovery at Baylor, said, "This decision by Agilent will be a major addition to the Alkek Center in the area of metabolomics and will greatly aid our metabolic R&D and service capabilities for the Texas Medical Center."

"The growing significance of metabolomics, not only in life science research but in many application spaces, has resulted in the need for more analytical capabilities," said Dr. Arun Sreekumar, co-director of the Alkek Center. "Baylor and Agilent have identified several areas of mutual interest-metabolomics, lipidomics, clinical research, disease research-where we believe we can make real progress together."

Agilent is equipping the new center with two systems configured for metabolomics: an Agilent 6495 triple quadrupole LC/MS system and an Agilent 6550 iFunnel quadrupole time-of-flight LC/MS system with a switchable GC APCI interface. The systems include Mass Hunter software for qualitative and quantitative analysis as well as Mass Profiler Professional with Pathway Architect for bioinformatics and integrated multi-omic analysis.

Baylor and Agilent will use the equipment collaboratively to analyze samples, conduct research and train students. Both parties have enjoyed a long-standing scientific relationship, which has resulted in several published application breakthroughs in cancer metabolomics.