A group led by Prof Bruno Domon, director of the Luxembourg Clinical Proteomics (LCP) unit, is to use the LTQ Orbitrap Velos hybrid mass spectrometer in its clinical biomarker research.
The collaboration between Thermo Fisher Scientific and Dormon aims to develop workflows that overcome current bottlenecks in biomarker discovery and assay development for clinical proteomics research.
Thermo Fisher has collaborated with Domon since 2007, and previous joint work has led to the development of original proteomics approaches for biomarker discovery and verification.
Foremost among these is the Intelligent Selected Reaction Monitoring (ISRM) technology now incorporated within the Thermo Scientific TSQ family of triple quadrupole mass spectrometers.
ISRM is said to reduce acquisition times for each peptide analysed in a peptide biomarker panel, allowing both improved quantification and confirmation of the identity of the peptide being quantified.
In addition, Domon was a primary scientific contributor to the Thermo Scientific Pinpoint software, which simplifies the creation of quantitative peptide assays on Thermo Scientific TSQ mass spectrometers and allows researchers to leverage knowledge acquired in previous qualitative proteomics discovery experiments.
Domon was recently appointed director of LCP initiative at CRP- Sante.
He has established a biomarker research group that is active in clinical proteomics with a focus on biomarker verification and plans to encompass metabolomics in the near future.
The CRP-Sante research group will employ the recently introduced Thermo Scientific LTQ Orbitrap Velos hybrid mass spectrometer equipped with electron transfer dissociation (ETD) for biomarker discovery.
This latest-generation hybrid ion-trap Orbitrap instrument is said to be more accurate, faster and more sensitive than older-generation LTQ Orbitrap instruments.
It enables the massive, rapid and accurate identification of proteins in complex mixtures and the characterisation of post-translational modifications.
These capabilities are central to the creation of a second-generation biomarker discovery and validation workflow.
In addition, the group will utilise the Thermo Scientific TSQ Vantage triple-stage quadrupole mass spectrometer for fast, sensitive and accurate targeted protein quantification, and it will use Pinpoint software for rapid, automated assay development.
The Thermo Scientific Exactive bench-top LC/MS mass spectrometer, which leverages Orbitrap technology, will be employed for biomarker profiling analyses.
