The following companies released new products with proteomics applications at Pittcon 2004: Agilent Technologies, Amersham Biosciences, Bruker BioSciences, Shimadzu, Thermo Electron, Varian, and Waters. For a complete list of product introductions, see p. 7.
MDS Sciex has launched the ProteoSpin protein purification product line. The new products use a technology licensed from Norgen Biotek consisting of a matrix made from processed silicon carbide. The material is “chemically inert and capable of withstanding high-speed centrifugation, extreme pH values, and high temperature,” said Norgen Biotek president Yousef Haj-Ahmed. The new product line includes three complementary kits. Sciex said it holds exclusive licensing rights to the SiC technology.
Mobius of Exeter, UK has launched the NanoPlasmon platform, which the company said is an alternative to SPR technology. The technology combines array-based plasmon interference measurements with bulk refractive index compensation to make up for noise limitations, the company said. This combination allows users to add buffers of differing refractive index and to rapidly change experimental temperatures to get multidimensional data for each point on the array, while maintaining signal-to-noise ratios and monitoring kinetic changes, according to the company.
Pepscan Systems has released the PepChip Kinase, an array of peptide substrates used for analysis of protein kinases. The array contains 1,152 peptide substrates in duplicate on each slide. Assay volumes used for the chip are 50 microliters. Potential applications include: analyzing kinase activity in cells and tissue lysates; characterizing substrate specificity of novel kin-ases, analyzing effects of kinase inhibitors on kinases; and finding substrate specificity fingerprints of known kinases.