NMR Solutions to Enhance Workflow Efficiency

At the 58th Experimental Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Conference, Bruker announced new software and hardware addressing the need for enhanced workflow solutions for NMR spectroscopy research and analysis. These solutions will benefit researchers in many disciplines of NMR while providing productivity enhancements for pharmaceutical users.

Rainer Kuemmerle, Ph.D., NMR Product Manager for the Bruker BioSpin Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy division, explained: “We always have our customers in mind when developing new technologies and applications, and these latest NMR solutions exemplify this mindset. From academic to pharma, and to chemical and advanced materials customers, we focus on making our customers successful by enhancing their productivity and expanding their range of NMR applications.”

TopSpin 4® is the next generation of Bruker’s NMR software for spectrometer control and data analysis, designed for the newly introduced AVANCE™ NEO platform. The combination of a new user interface and capabilities to support multiple receivers and other AVANCE NEO capabilities will make TopSpin 4 a very powerful and intuitive software for NMR spectroscopists. Existing AVANCE III HD customers will also benefit from a new TopSpin 3.5 version, as we continue enhancements and support for the Avance III HD platform.

Designed to simplify and accelerate the setup of biomolecular NMR experiments, the new bioTop™ module performs most biomolecular tasks in full automation. Only minimal user interaction is required for most experiments. The process starts after inserting the sample, taking care of shimming, locking and tuning if necessary. From experiment selections to final processed spectra, including optimization of commonly used parameters, bioTop can be customized to accommodate much of the workflow in biomolecular NMR laboratories.

The new TopSolids™ module is an intuitive, workflow-based software for solid-state NMR. TopSolids is designed to give easy access to the delicate setup of probe hardware and complex solid-state NMR experiments, e.g. from structural biology on membrane proteins, to pharmaceutical comounds, to catalysis, battery research, polymer or material science work. For any customer who could benefit from solid-state NMR, TopSolids 2.0 will be a great productivity tool, decreasing the time for setup and providing even more results, for novice and expert users.

Of particular interest to BioTech and Pharma customers are two novel solutions:

• Bruker's new PotencyMR™ solution provides a cost-effective 'one-stop' NMR approach for determining the potency of drugs, including potency calculation, identification, residual solvent and water content in one single experiment. With a streamlined, easy-to-use, robust workflow from sample submission to report, PotencyMR is for experts and non-experts in pharmaceutical development, where quality, accuracy and reproducibility are required.
• NMR Fragment-based Screening (FBS) in the pharmaceutical industry has become a widely applied method for the discovery and optimization of lead molecules in targeted screening campaigns. The new FBS workflow solution is built into TopSpin® and streamlines FBS data handling and analysis, thus providing an easier way to screen compounds to find potential new drugs.

For NMR detection, Bruker is pleased to introduce the new iProbe™ platform. This novel NMR probe architecture allows not only for an increase in signal to noise, and faster and more accurate rf tuning, but also provides a more flexible design that allows easier customization of NMR probes for dedicated applications. The first probes introduced on this platform include the industry-leading SmartProbe iProbes, available now from 400-600 MHz, offering up to 10% increase in sensitivity.

The InsightMR™ portfolio of applications for monitoring chemical and biological processes is expanding further, in order to increase understanding of reaction mechanisms, chemical processes as well as cell metabolism. InsightXpress™ now enhances the NMR monitoring of fast reactions and rapid, automated, screening of reactions conditions. For studies on living cells, InsightCell™ now monitors living cells to study their biological activity through direct NMR measurements of variations in metabolite concentration.