Intrinsic Bioprobes formally joined Biacore and Bruker Daltonics in their effort to develop and commercialize a combined surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry system, the company said last week.
Although Intrinsic CEO Randall Nelson first began working with Biacore on SPR/MS in the late 90s, most of the development over the past few years has come from groups working independently with support from National Cancer Institute phase I and II SBIR grants, said Dobrin Nedelkov, a senior scientist for Intrinsic involved with the research.
The new agreement seeks to bring the companies more closely together in an effort to produce new intellectual property for a new SPR/MS system, Nedelkov said. While Intrinsic may not ultimately participate in manufacturing a commercially-available instrument, both Intrinsic and Biacore also collaborate with Bruker, creating a triumvirate of expertise for developing any product.
Intrinsic's contribution to the development team, Nedelkov said, is in the fundamental technology required for combining the two analysis systems on a single platform. Nelson has co-authored over twenty papers describing methods for integrating SPR and MS, Nedelkov said, making the company the “principal movers and shakers” in the field.
In particular, Intrinsic has created techniques for applying the MALDI matrix to SPR samples without destroying the spatial resolution of the samples arrayed on the chip, Nedelkov said. In addition, the company has modified the SPR chip geometry to allow easy transfer between the SPR and mass spectrometry steps of the analysis.
–JSM