Waters acquires Charge Detection Mass Spectrometry technology to broaden its application in cell and gene therapy

Waters Corporation has announced it has acquired the technology assets and intellectual property rights of Megadalton Solutions, Inc., an early-stage developer of Charge Detection Mass Spectrometry (CDMS) technology and services. Financial details of the transaction are not being disclosed.

Founded in 2018 by professors Martin Jarrold and David Clemmer at Indiana University, Megadalton Solutions has developed CDMS instrumentation that makes it possible to analyze extremely large proteins and protein complexes, such as those used in cell and gene therapies, that would otherwise be difficult to analyze with conventional mass spectrometry. Waters became a strategic investor in the company and in 2021 brought Megadalton’s CDMS technology into the Waters Immerse™ Cambridge innovation and research lab for advanced testing and development.

“Large molecule mass spectrometry with CDMS offers an important tool for the characterization, analysis and quantification of next-generation biologics, such as cell and gene therapies, which is an area of high interest among biopharmaceutical and biomedical research customers,” said Dr. Udit Batra, President and CEO, Waters Corporation. “Large molecules can be extremely challenging to characterize with conventional mass spectrometry because of their complexity. We are looking forward to further developing and commercializing the Megadalton CDMS technology to help customers analyze and quantify large molecules in applications such as cell and gene therapy drug development.”

“We developed our CDMS detector to bring the precision of mass spectrometry to the analysis of complex biologics,” said Dr. Martin Jarrold, CEO of Megadalton Solutions, Inc. “It is an exciting milestone in our journey to have Waters carry forward and continue the development of CDMS for the analysis of large molecules such as gene-based therapies that represent the next generation of medicine.”

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