Company Announcements

Microsaic’s 2015 sales declined 31.5% to £782,813 ($1.2 million). Operating loss widened 23.2% to £3.9 million ($6 million). Twenty-three units were sold during the year. The total number ordered or sold as of the first half of this year is 112.

Proteome Sciences reported a 33% increase in sales of TMT tags in 2015.

In May, Thermo Fisher Scientific extended its technology collaboration with the UK’s University of Birmingham at the University’s Phenome Centre. Thermo Fisher will supply LC and MS instruments for metabolic phenotyping and metabolomics studies.

In June, Leap Technologies and Antec announced a joint venture for hydrogen deuterium exchange–MS automation, which will integrate their respective PAL HDX workstation and Roxy EC system.

Expanding an existing patent licensing agreement, Excellims entered into an exclusive worldwide license agreement in June with Washington State University for a new instrumental method to interface an ambient pressure IMS to an MS that will improve ion transmission into the MS.

On June 14, the University of Manchester in the UK and SCIEX opened the Stoller Biomarker Discovery Centre, which focuses on biomedical research, including cancer, psoriasis and arthritis, utilizing MS. The Centre houses SCIEX MS and LC systems as well as automated sample preparation systems from other Danaher companies.

Waters announced a joint effort with Singapore’s Bioprocessing Technology Institute to develop new methods of finding cancer markers and elucidating glycosylation pathways. They will develop a glycosphingolipid head group database containing glucose unit retention times and collision cross-section values.

Waters welcomed the Maastricht MultiModal Molecular Imaging Institute M41 into its Center of Innovation Program. The Institute conducts MS-based research in three main areas: oncology, neurology and cardiovascular medicine.

Thermo Fisher Scientific and Ireland’s National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training announced a scientific collaboration focused on the development of analytical solutions for the characterization of complex biopharmaceuticals. They will develop workflows using Thermo Fisher’s columns, LC and Orbitrap MS systems.

Product Introductions

In May, Biognosys released Spectronaut 9.0 for quantitative proteomics using hyper reaction monitoring. It now includes support for Biognosys’s calibration kits and Bruker’s Impact II systems.

The US CDC announced the release of the MicrobeNet module for Bruker’s MALDI Biotyper systems. The CDC’s MicrobeNet provides online access to a virtual microbe library of rare and emerging infectious bacteria and fungi.