Applied Biosystems and Sciex have commercialised a first-of-its-kind mass spectrometry platform, the FlashQuant™ designed to help pharmaceutical companies speed up the drug compound screening process. This platform is expected to be the first commercially available system to combine industry-standard triple quadrupole mass spectrometry with the MALDI technology.
MALDI is a method for converting samples into charged particles, or ions, required for analysis by mass spectrometry. It has attributes of both high capacity and high throughput capability. Triple-quadrupoles, on the other hand, are a type of mass spectrometer used in life sciences research for the measurement of minute quantities of a compound. Because of their high sensitivity and specificity, they are the standard method used for the analysis of small molecules including drug compounds and their metabolites.
The FlashQuant™ platform will help generate data in a fraction of the time currently required. The system interface enables efficient transmission of ions with the robustness to run hundreds of samples while providing the level of sensitivity required for the absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (ADME) applications. Here, the MALDI sample preparation can be automated and decoupled from the mass spectrometry step, and samples are read in parallel in a plate format.
