• Advion Biosciences of Ithaca, NY, has put the first of its array-based disposable nanospray nozzles into beta testing at Matthias Mann’s lab at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, and at the Lilly Development Centre in Mont-Saint-Guibert, Belgium. The 10 x 10 array of nanospray nozzles, known as the NanoSpray 100, is mounted on a silicon chip compatible with triple quadrupole, ESI-TOF, QTOF, FT/MS, and ion trap mass spectrometers. The company expects to have revenue customers in June and to begin shipping units in September. The product is manufactured by a unit of Corning.
• Ray Deshaies, professor of biology at CalTech, spoke on his use of MudPIT (multidimensional protein identification technology) to unravel protein complexes. The technology, developed by John Yates of the Scripps Research Institute, combines multidimensional HPLC, ion trap mass spectrometry, and database search algorithms to identify peptides using mass spectrometry data. Deshaies compared a set of his own protein complex data with that of the recent MDS Proteomics and Cellzome papers in Nature, and his set included additional proteins not found in the MDS and Cellzome data. In conclusion, he said multiple methods are required to identify all the protein complexes in a given sample.
• Al Burlingame, professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco, presented his recent work using an ABI MALDI TOF/TOF coupled to a Genomic Solutions ProPrep digestion/sample prep platform. To boost his throughput to 8,000 protein digests per day, Burlingame is planning to install a cassette system that will hold 24 96-well plates at a time.
• Chris Williams of Millennium Pharmaceuticals discussed an 18-month-old collaboration with Biacore to create a microfluidic protein array based on the Biacore SPR technology and S51 cell. It will accommodate 40-50 spots using “hydrodynamic addressing” and “inflow immobilization.” Millennium has nine Biacore instruments and two Biacore staff on site. The companies have yet to file patents on the technology, Williams said.