Earlier this month, Waters announced an exclusive relationship with informatics provider Nonlinear Dynamics. Although the companies have had a comarketing agreement since 2005, the new OEM agreement is for the codevelopment of informatics tools for Waters’s LC/MS platforms. The agreement signifies the progression of Waters’s MS informatics offerings, as well as trends in MS analysis.

The announcement comes three months after the companies’ introduction of their first jointly developed product, the Waters Omics Research Platform with TransOmics Informatics. The Platform’s proteomics solution is for use with the Waters nanoACQUITY UPLC and SNAPT G2-S HDMS orthogonal acceleration–Q–TOF MS for bottom-up analysis. The Platform’s metabolomics solution consists of the ACQUITY UPLC I-Class and SNAPT G2-S for routine screening of large sample cohorts.

The Platform builds upon Nonlinear Dynamics’ Progenesis LC/MS informatics solution. “We’re actually codeveloping solutions, which really move their technology past where they are today in terms of being able to perform these types of quantitative experiments,” explained Jim Langridge, PhD, director of Pharmaceutical & Life Sciences Discovery at Waters. “I’d point out that we see this as a long-term relationship. So this is the first I think of several iterations of the product which we believe we’ll bring to the marketplace.”

The Platform makes use of the SYNAPT G2-S’s traveling-wave ion mobility spectrometry technology, which separates ions by size, shape, mass and charge. “[The Platform] allows us to take account of the ion mobility information and to display that to users like we’ve never been able to before,” said Dr. Langridge.

The Platform is also focused on quantitation. “The number of samples needed for biological studies is increasing, requiring quantitative solutions,” said Dr. Langridge. “Generally, in these types of discovery experiments, people are talking about tens of samples. But I think what we would like to do is be able to say ‘you can actually do this on hundreds of samples.’ I think then you start to get statistically relevant information in terms of some of the quantitative changes you see.” As he explained, such studies require easier-to-use informatics because users are increasingly biologists and clinical researchers. In this regard, he noted the visual capabilities of the Platform.

Discussing the Platform’s metabolomics solution, Dr. Langridge noted, “From an informatics perspective, I think it’s where we see quite an opportunity because it’s not as well developed [as proteomics.] . . .I think the metabolomics area is probably a little big younger, a little more exciting from an LC/MS perspective.”