BDAL’s Q1 New Bookings Rise by 25 Percent
Bruker Daltonics said last week that its new order bookings for life-science systems grew by 25 percent during the first quarter of 2002, compared with the same quarter of 2001. “We see real excitement and increasing demand for our Ultraflex TOF/TOF system,” Frank Laukien, Bruker Daltonics’ CEO, said in a statement. “Our shipments and installations for the Ultraflex are ramping up smoothly.”
Agilent to Use MassTech’s AP-MALDI in New Mass Spec
Agilent Technologies and Burtonsville, Md.-based MassTech agreed last week to customize a version of MassTech’s atmospheric pressure MALDI (AP-MALDI) ion source for use with the Agilent 1100 series LC/MSD Trap ion trap mass spectrometer, and possible future mass spectrometers. The new instrument will have MS/MS capabilities, and can detect absolute sample amounts in the low femtomole range spotted onto the sample plate, Agilent said. The company has not released a price for the mass spectrometer, but said in a statement that it would offer tandem mass spectrometry capabilities at a fraction of the cost of a Q-TOF or MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer. Agilent expects to begin shipping the instrument in late summer 2002.
Harvard Researchers Identify Biomarker With Ciphergen Platform
In a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research April 8, researchers from the Brigham & Women’s Hospital of Harvard Medical School reported that they had identified a potential biomarker for ovarian cancer using Ciphergen’s SELDI ProteinChip system, Ciphergen said in a statement. The researchers, led by Samuel Mok, found that an 11.7 kDa protein, the alpha chain of haptoglobin, was elevated in a majority of serum samples taken from ovarian cancer patients. In a screen of 171 samples, Mok and his colleagues determined that the presence of the haptoglobin peak gave 90 percent specificity and 71 percent sensitivity, an accuracy greater than any currently available blood test for ovarian cancer, according to Ciphergen.