Disaster preparedness: Franek Technologies protects $700K in biomedical mass spectrometry instrumentation and informatics for University of Michigan Medical School
Franek Technologies has been selected to protect the University of Michigan Medical School biomedical mass spectrometry facility's investment in mass spectrometry analysis equipment.
With Franek Technologies's instrumentation-specific power protection solutions, the biomedical mass spectrometry facility is now protected against power fluctuations or failure that could otherwise cause costly damage to instrumentation, loss of samples and data, as well as significant lost productive time.
Franek Technologies' certified power protection systems currently protect all of the research instrumentation and electronics within the Biomedical Mass Spectrometry Facility, including Thermo Electron LTQ and TSQ liquid chromatograph-mass spectrometers, along with the Waters CapLC and Alliance 2695 modular system high performance liquid chromatographs.
The University of Michigan desired protection from significant power abnormalities (brown-outs, sags, surges etc) caused by summer heat waves, the thunderstorm season, and ice storms.
Kate Noon, manager of the biomedical mass spectrometry facility, wanted consistent power delivery to the facility's expensive instrumentation to avoid costly damage to the instrumentation and the potential loss of irreplaceable research samples and data.
Based on a referral from the director of the DNA Core Sequencing Laboratory at the University, where Franek Technologies currently protects its Applied Biosystems Prism 3100, 3700, 3730XL genetic analysers and 7900HT sequence detection system instruments, Noon sought the power protection expertise of Franek Technologies.
"I've seen first hand what can happen to a laboratory without power conditioning," Noon explains.
"Brown-outs and power surges can cause extensive damage to mass spectrometry equipment.
"We need power clean enough for our sensitive research equipment.
"If we are going to invest significant resources in research instrumentation, we need to go the extra step to protect the instrumentation and keep things running smoothly".
Working closely with Dr Noon, the experts at Franek Technologies custom designed a power protection solution to guarantee that the mass spectrometry instrumentation and supporting electronics will remain viable 24/7, regardless of the condition of the power coming into the facility.
The biomedical mass spectrometry facility provides unique, hands-on training to graduate and post-doctoral students, as well as faculty members, on the fundamentals of mass spectrometry for application to future pursuits in pharmacology.
Through research at the facility, many new drug candidates are identified and modifications on existing drugs are developed.
Investigators focus on a wide-array of areas, such as cardiovascular health, oncology, and autoimmune diseases, with a huge variety of applications.
As one of the top medical schools and research institutions in the country, the training provided at the biomedical mass spectrometry facility ensures that the top graduate students are well prepared to enter the field of pharmacology and make great strides in drug discovery.
