Waters Centers of Innovation Programme honours Colorado State University Laboratory

Proteomics and metabolomics facility recognised for innovation in biological mass spectrometry

Waters Corporation officially welcomed Colorado State University’s proteomics and metabolomics facility into its Centres of Innovation Programme in a recently held ceremony at Colorado State University’s Fort Collins, CO campus. The proteomics and metabolomics facility is equipped with a Waters Xevo G2 QToF, Xevo G2 ToF, and two Xevo TQ-S systems, all paired with Waters ACQUITY UPLC systems, an instrument for separating sample components from one another and precisely delivering the analytes one by one into the mass spectrometer where the amounts of each analyte are measured and identified.

Under the direction of Dr Jessica Prenni, the facility has earned a reputation for excellence in applying non-targeted proteomics and metabolomics using liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry (LC/MS) to advance food and veterinary science and clinical and microbacterial research.

“We take pride and ownership that our discoveries will have a meaningful impact and we recognise the importance of partnerships with corporations like Waters,” said Alan Rudolph, Vice President for Research, Colorado State University. “We’ve seen the impact on science that instrumentation, microfluidics separations, higher resolution, and the ability to look at complex mixtures, can have both here and abroad. We are excited about our partnership with Waters as a way to fuel new discoveries and allow us to live up to our land grant ethos.”

As part of its academic mission, the proteomics and metabolomics facility develops and validates assays, tools and techniques. In the last year, Prenni’s team has assisted over 200 principal investigators in 24 departments at six colleges.

“One of the biggest advantages of our partnership with Waters is early access to technology, such as the ionKey/MS system,” said Dr Prenni. “Using this technology, we developed an assay for one of our clients for five clinically-relevant steroidal compounds which has been applied to a clinical data set of 1,000 serum samples from post-menopausal women. The method showed significant increases in sensitivity, decreases in solvent consumption as compared to traditional assays as well as an ability to separate structural isomers. This project is a great example of how our collaboration with Waters has led to the development of new technologies and allowed us to advance the way we answer important biological questions.”

Eric Fotheringham, Director, Waters Centers of Innovation Programme also congratulated the team.

In conjunction with the centres of innovation programme ceremony, Colorado State University (CSU) and Waters Corporation co-organised a symposium on Advances in Biological Mass Spectrometry featuring presentations by Prenni and Dr Karen Dobos of CSU, Dana Sedin of the New Belgium Brewery and Vladimir Shulaev of the University of North Texas.

EP News Bureau – Mumbai