Laboratory Productivity Improves with First Commercial Mass Spectrometry-based System for Amino Acid Analysis

Applied Biosystems, an Applera Corporation business, and its joint venture partner, MDS Sciex, a division of MDS Inc., today announced a new laboratory system that uses mass spectrometry to reliably, cost-effectively and efficiently perform amino acid analysis.

The new Amino Acid 20/20™ Analyzer is designed to increase productivity of laboratory researchers by improving the effectiveness and reliability of applications that are commonly used to conduct amino acid analysis. The new system is the first to combine mass spectrometry with unique tagging reagents for use with these applications.

Amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins, are analyzed to measure and characterize proteins. This process is utilized in a variety of applications that include biopharmaceutical quality control and assessment of the nutritional value of foods, beverages and animal feed.

Amino acid analysis is typically performed using a well-established technology called chromatography, which dates back to the 1950s. And while a proven technology, the chromatography-based process is known by the research community to be rather laborious and prone to breakdowns. The Amino Acid 20/20™ Analyzer is a significant step forward with more than twice the speed of existing chromatography systems. The new system also provides better separation of amino acids, including difficult-to-distinguish isobaric amino acids, which have identical masses. Moreover, the internal standards established by the tagging reagents ensure the accuracy of quantitation.

Biopharmaceutical companies conduct amino acid analysis as standard practice for purposes such as quality control and optimizing biology discovery lab applications. One of the first pharmaceutical companies to utilize the Amino Acid 20/20™ Analyzer is GlaxoSmithKline, one of the world’s largest over-the-counter consumer healthcare products companies. “We are already realizing a significant time and cost savings with the speed, sensitivity and reliability of the Amino Acid 20/20™ Analyzer in our lab,” said Jon Williams, manager, discovery research, GlaxoSmithKline. “The higher sensitivity also allows us to use less sample, which in some cases is quite precious.”

Another industry in which amino acid analysis plays an important role is renewable fuel production. A research center focused on improving the benefits of fuel ethanol production in the expanding biofuel industry is the National Corn to Ethanol Research Center, located in Illinois. By performing amino acid analysis, the center determines the nutritional value of the co-product used for animal feed. “The nutritional yield determines market value of the product,” explained Yanhong Zhang, Ph.D, Analytical Lab Manager. “With its reliable, simple operation, even non-technical users can use the Amino Acid 20/20™ Analyzer to confirm the amino acid composition, thereby improving the marketability and economics of the corn-to-ethanol process.”

The Amino Acid 20/20™ Analyzer is based on the high-performance Applied Biosystems/MDS SCIEX triple quadrupole mass spectrometers and uses proprietary chemistry reagents called Applied Biosystems iTRAQ™ reagents, which provide a unique way to label the amino acids that are subsequently analyzed for accurate quantitation. The new system also incorporated the new Cliquid™ applications software; which was designed to make mass spectrometry-based applications easier to use.

“As the first mass spectrometry-based system to meet significant unmet needs of the amino acid analysis market – namely, higher throughput and accurate quantitation of key amino acids – this system extends Applied Biosystems/MDS SCIEX’s innovative technologies for additional use in pharmaceutical companies, food testing facilities and research centers,” said Laura Lauman, division president, Proteomics & Small Molecule Division, Applied Biosystems.

Andy Boorn, president of MDS Sciex, concluded that, “The Amino Acid 20/20™ Analyzer is a reliable and powerful tool for the researchers in biopharmaceutical quality control and nutritional testing. The combination of our robust and high performance mass spectrometers with the easy-to-use software will bring greater accuracy and speed to their testing.”