Cerno Bioscience reports that its MS calibration and data analysis software, MassWorks, has been granted United States Patent No 6,983,213
Cerno's patent covers a fundamentally new approach to calibrating mass spectrometry (MS) data.
MassWorks is an easy-to-use post acquisition software package that utilizes Cerno's patented MSIntegrity technology to dramatically improve data readings, achieving high mass accuracy even on conventional mass spectrometers of unit mass resolution.
The software is a first-of-its-kind comprehensive approach to calibrating various types of mass spectrometry systems to enable highly accurate mass spectral analysis, including high mass accuracy, best possible quantitative precision and accuracy, and high fidelity molecular identification.
MassWorks has been developed for biotech, environmental and pharmaceutical applications, and enables analysts to obtain up to 100X improvement in mass accuracy in a fast and versatile MS software application package.
The patent demonstrates Cerno's authority on understanding the exact isotope masses and abundances of any known calibration compound to generate, for the first time in the development of mass spectrometry, a comprehensive MS calibration equation, which corrects not only the peak mass positions, but also the peak shapes.
This enables unit mass resolution instruments to routinely obtain mass accuracies of up to 5ppm, making it possible to perform accurate compound identification through elemental composition searches, a capability usually only available on more expensive systems.
MassWorks recently won the Pittcon 2006 Editors' Choice bronze award following its show debut at the Pittsburgh Conference of Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy in March 2006.
This prestigious accolade is given to the best new product introduction for its contribution to the advancement of science, as judged by a panel of editors attending the show.
"Our approach to calibrating mass spectrometers for the first time unifies mass calibration with peak shape standardization into one complete mass spectral calibration, offering dramatic improvements in mass accuracy, signal-to-noise, reproducibility and the ability to analyze and extract information from any MS data," said Yongdong Wang, president at Cerno.
"Not only does this provide an elegant and mathematically defendable solution to the challenging problem of peak detection in mass spectrometry, it also fundamentally changes how MS and MS data are utilized in solving the wide ranging problems from environmental to biomedical science".
MassWorks utilizes Cerno's DirectRead technology to read most instrument data formats directly, eliminating the need for importing or exporting MS data to the clipboard or utilizing intermediate exchange formats.
This saves time, reduces transcription errors, simplifies file management, and saves substantial disk space.
As DirectRead doesn't alter the original data, it assists compliance with common regulatory requirements such as GLP and 21 CFR Part 11.
