IBO has selected Shimadzu’s AXIMA MegaTOF MALDI-TOF MS as the product of the show at this year’s ASMS meeting. While new introductions and improvements of triple quadrupole and Q-TOF LC-MS were impressive, the MegaTOF opens up new areas of MS analysis.

The MegaTOF is a linear TOF built around the use of CovalX’s high mass range detector, which is capable of analyzing ions up to 1.5 megadaltons (1,500,000 Da), a far larger range than any other MS on the market, and a significant improvement on CovalX’s most recent aftermarket detector. Although CovalX first begin shipping it’s detectors in 2006 (see IBO 10/15/09), they were sold only as aftermarket products. The integration of such a detector into a dedicated MALDI-TOF by one of the major MALDI-TOF vendors is a validation of the demand for such a product, and will help make high-mass MALDI-TOF more accessible.

While much of the demand for high-mass MALDI-TOF is for basic research applications, the largest demand now comes from applied areas within the pharmaceuticals industry, including characterization of antibody-antigen reactions, and the aggregation of biopharmaceutical and therapeutic proteins. Other applications include analysis of higher-weight polymers and the direct analysis of large biomolecules. Such analyses previously had to be done using less direct MS methods, or using other types of analyses that are much less specific.

The MegaTOF is now beginning to ship. The system includes both the integrated CovalX detector as well as a conventional detector for mass ranges under 50 k Da. .