The FlashQuant platform is described as the first commercially available system to combine industry-standard triple quadrupole mass spectrometry with widely-used Maldi technology
Applied Biosystems and Sciex have announced plans to commercialise a first-of-its-kind mass spectrometry platform designed to help pharmaceutical companies accelerate the drug compound screening process.
Laboratory tests conducted by Applied Biosystems/MDS Sciex with the new platform have consistently delivered a 25-fold increase in speed for small molecule quantitation, compared with the fastest liquid chromatography-coupled triple quadrupole mass spectrometers currently in the market.
The FlashQuant platform is being developed to help pharmaceutical companies improve the process of conducting research in the early stages of drug discovery.
With drug development cost estimates exceeding $1 billion per drug and an increasing failure rate for lead drug candidates in the development process, the pharmaceutical industry is keenly focused on ways to improve output and efficiency.
Some estimates have put the out-of-pocket price tag at $37,000 per day for each day a compound remains in development.
The new platform from Applied Biosystems/MDS Sciex is expected to enable scientists to generate the same volume of research data in a fraction of the time currently required by other methods, reducing a process that can typically take a day or more to complete to less than one hour.
Early users of the platform predict that this ability to generate faster results may enable more efficiency and productivity in pharmaceutical research.
"Pharmaceutical scientists are looking to deliver quality information faster and with more consistent results," said Laura Lauman, president for Applied Biosystems's proteomics and small molecules division.
"We believe that the FlashQuant system is a breakthrough platform that will improve early drug discovery by increasing the speed and the number of compounds that can be profiled.
"This could potentially result in more efficiency and greater ROI in the drug development process, by enabling important development decisions to be made earlier and with more reliability".
Applied Biosystems/MDS Sciex Instruments has created this industry-first technology in drug molecule quantitation by bringing together two technologies with which it has industry-leading expertise: Maldi and triple quadrupole mass spectrometers.
Maldi is a method for converting samples into the charged particles, or ions, required for analysis by mass spectrometry.
Among its attributes are both high capacity and high throughput capability.
Triple-quadrupoles are a type of mass spectrometer used in life sciences research to measure minute quantities of compounds.
Because of their high sensitivity and specificity, they are the standard method used for the analysis of small molecules including drug compounds and their metabolites.
One of the initial applications expected for the FlashQuant platform is early absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (Adme) profiling in pharmaceutical discovery laboratories.
Adme profiling is a key step in the screening of candidate compounds, whereby the characteristics of a compound are evaluated for suitability as a drug.
By increasing the speed with which Adme profiling can be executed and by enabling the screening of far more samples within a given time, Adme labs are expected to be able to present to their organisations a greater number of compound alternatives to evaluate in the drug development process.
The new system is expected to be suitable for high throughput Adme laboratories ranging in size from small to large.
An Adme scientist who has worked with the new technology is Mark Cole, a research fellow at Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in Groton, Connecticut.
He oversees an Adme laboratory that runs an average of 75,000 samples per five-day week, to provide Adme data to early discovery projects.
The data his laboratory generates is funnelled back to chemists who use it optimise the Adme properties to provide better compounds for development.
The 25-fold increase in speed afforded by the FlashQuant platform has the opportunity to greatly decrease analysis time, freeing staff and resources to work on other projects and to provide additional data to help guide decision making.
"This is a disruptive technology that will make us rethink how we do things," said Cole.
"The tremendous increase in speed unlocks a lot of potential for our lab, allowing us to consider running experiments that we don't have the capacity for now.
"With this throughput, we could essentially 'front-load' discovery, which increases the chances of ultimately getting a compound to market".
Drawing on 20 years of experience in developing innovative mass spectrometry tools for life science research, Applied Biosystems/MDS Sciex developed a patented method for high-throughput quantitation of small molecules using Maldi and multiple-reaction-monitoring on a triple quadrupole mass analyser.
This included the design of an interface that enables efficient transmission of ions with the robustness to run hundreds of thousands of samples while providing the level of sensitivity required for Adme applications.
Because Maldi sample preparation can be automated and decoupled from the mass spectrometry step and samples are read in parallel in a plate format, FlashQuant is designed to allow scientists to take full advantage of the speed of mass spectrometry.
"Applied Biosystems/MDS Sciex Instruments history of working with pharmaceutical companies continues to shape our deep understanding of the tools needed to advance drug development," said Andy Boorn, president for MDS Analytical Technologies.
"We believe that with mass spectrometry innovations such as FlashQuant, we will continue to drive new capabilities for pharmaceutical discovery".
The FlashQuant platform is expected to be available for shipment in late summer, 2007.
