Cerno Bioscience Launches MassWorks™ CLIPS for Unprecedented Elemental Composition Determination

Cerno Bioscience announces the unveiling of MassWorks™ CLIPS (Calibrated Lineshape Isotope Profile Search), an entirely new and revolutionary way to attain fast and reliable elemental composition determination (ECD) from single or triple quadrupole mass spectrometers.

Using Cerno’s pioneering calibration techniques combined with this latest breakthrough, users of any single or triple quadrupole mass spectrometer will be able to attain unambiguous elemental composition ID, a capability previously not possible with accurate mass measurements alone and difficult to achieve even on more expensive high resolution systems. During ECD, CLIPS relies not only on mass accuracy but, more importantly, on a newly developed and uniquely selective metric called Spectral Accuracy when evaluating different formulae of very similar exact masses. This radical innovation has not been possible before and will be demonstrated exclusively at PITTCON 2007 booth #4579, Chicago, Illinois, February 26 – March 1 2007.

In order to use the full isotope fingerprint to unambiguously identify an unknown compound formula, CLIPS utilizes the accurate mass calibration of the award-winning MassWorks™. Normally, single and triple quadrupole instruments can only produce indistinct unit mass resolution data, but with MassWorks they can obtain up to 5ppm mass accuracy. This enables a formula search to pare down a small number of formula candidates, a capability usually only available in highly specialized high resolution systems. However, MassWorks not only calibrates the instrument data to accurate mass, it also calibrates the actual instrument lineshape to a known mathematical function. This allows for the accurate calculation of the theoretical isotope profile for each formula candidate using the same lineshape as the calibrated lineshape. The patented CLIPS algorithm then matches each formula candidate to the calibrated mass spectrum with unparalleled differentiating power to provide a unique formula determination via the Spectral Accuracy metric.

“For the first time ever, MassWorks CLIPS provides mass spectrometrists with a definitive answer when conducting elemental composition determination”, says Dr. Yongdong Wang, president of Cerno Bioscience. “In the past, single and triple quad mass spectrometers were generally not considered suitable for formula ID. MassWorks’ ability to calibrate these instruments to accurate mass and the CLIPS unique ability to calculate the Spectral Accuracy enables these low resolution instruments to discover the actual formula of the unidentified compound.”

For users with access to high resolution instruments, CLIPS also provides inexpensive and routine ECD on a day-to-day basis using simple, less expensive equipment. This frees up the high resolution systems and their highly trained operators for more challenging tasks. In addition, CLIPS can significantly reduce labor costs, as ECD can now be performed more routinely by less experienced operators.