UK: Disruptive 2D Mass Spectrometry
Spin-Out of Warwick University Raises Seed Investment for New 2DMS Technology
| Editor: Alexander Stark
Verdel Instruments — a spin-out company of the University of Warwick — has developed new disruptive two-dimensional mass spectrometry (2DMS) technology. The company now raised seed investment of over $ 290,000 from Longwall Ventures and Innovate UK. Their new technology is set to make pharmaceutical research and food safety testing more accurate, at least ten times quicker than at present, and allows higher throughput analyses.
Warwick/UK — Designed by researchers, the innovation from Verdel is the first benchtop instrument with 2DMS capability. The new technique makes the advanced 2DMS process accessible outside academia for the first time. It quickly and efficiently delivers high quality structural analysis and sequencing of every component in a complex mixture at the same time.
This disruptive 2DMS technology employs electric pulses to manipulate ions in a linear ion trap before fragmentation to enable parallel acquisition of mass spectra, which operates in combination with UV laser-based fragmentation and a fast mass analyser such as a time-of-flight. This data independent analysis (DIA) technique offers better specificity, sensitivity, and speed in sample analysis than current techniques in routine use, the developers claim.
Currently, complex samples run on liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry instruments used in the pharmaceutical industry require long run times, sometimes in the region of 90 minutes. If anomalies are found in the data, the run can be extended by an additional 180 minutes. With 2DMS, only a single 20-minute analysis is required. The new technique enables researchers to analyse multiple complex samples in one go, with all the data produced in parallel — something that has previously been impossible.
