ACD/Labs Announces LC/MS Project Management Software for Chromatographic Method Development

Advanced Chemistry Development, Inc., (ACD/Labs) introduces ACD/Method Development Suite for Mass Spectrometry, the first software package that supports LC/MS data for HPLC method optimization and project management.

With hyphenated detection such as LC/MS, LC/UV, and other detectors that are often used concurrently, chromatographers now have access to an unprecedented amount of power to perform their experiments. A single injection can create several large data files, and the onus is on the chromatographer to extract the peak information, manage the data, interpret the results, and understand the implications for the overall project. Over the course of a method development project, hundreds or thousands of sets of elution data may be generated, which can be overwhelming.

ACD/Method Development Suite for MS allows chromatographers to manage their projects, not just their samples. Users see a dashboard-view of their method development project. A concise overview of the project is presented, including the experiments performed, component retention times, chromatograms, and spectra, along with the rationale behind each experiment. From the summary table, links to the raw data are retained, giving users the ability to dig down into the original files, and even reprocess them when necessary.

“We believe that the ability to efficiently track and summarize projects will result in a giant leap forward in productivity for method development laboratories, much in the way that spreadsheet programs revolutionized Wall Street in the 1980s,” stated Michael McBrien, ACD/Labs Chromatography Product Manager. “The ability to clearly visualize the work done will enable better decisions, faster.”

In addition, ACD/Method Development Suite for MS also allows automated peak matching between experiments or samples. Peak tracking is one of the most tedious and time-consuming aspects of method development. Although automatic peak tracking based on spectral similarity has been available for several years for DAD data, ACD/Labs is the first to provide automated peak matching for LC/MS. The LC/MS peak matching algorithm is powered by ACD/IntelliXtract.

“It is a challenge to track peaks across different samples, experiments, injections, and detectors. Testers of ACD/Method Development Suite for MS reported that the software reduced the time spent on data evaluation associated with complex method development projects from two to four days down to two hours. "We are thrilled with these preliminary reports,” added McBrien.