Agilent Technologies obtains licence for Millennium Pharmaceuticals's SpectrumMill software, companies also to collaborate on proteomics technology
Agilent Technologies Europe has announced that it has obtained a license from Millennium Pharmaceuticals that will allow Agilent to exclusively develop and sell software based on Millennium's SpectrumMill software.
SpectrumMill sofware is a package of tools developed and used internally at Millennium for scientists doing protein research for disease and drug discovery.
The agreement also will provide Millennium with early and advanced access to Agilent products and chemistries for proteomics research.
SpectrumMill software provides scientists with highly advanced tools for analysing large volumes of complex mass spectral data.
SpectrumMill data can be integrated into Agilent's recently introduced Synapsia Informatics Workbench software platform.
"We look forward to offering our customers the SpectrumMill software," said John Michnowicz, proteomics programme manager at Agilent.
"We believe it will greatly increase the amount of information that scientists using Agilent's mass spectrometry-based proteomics solutions can extract from their samples." Millennium will assist in the development and evaluation of future Agilent proteomics products. Agilent hopes to benefit from Millennium's early evaluation of its proteomics products in an advanced research setting. "We are very pleased that SpectrumMill will now become widely available to the proteomics and mass spectrometry communities," said Steven Carr, senior director of discovery technologies at Millennium.
"In addition, the collaborative components of this agreement will provide Millennium early and advanced access to proteomics innovations under development by Agilent, which will contribute to enhancing our productivity and advancing our pipeline of drug candidates." SpectrumMill software combines data analysis functions essential to advanced proteomics research and data management tools for handling enormous sample volumes.
Major features include spectral preprocessing and protein database searching for both MS and MS/MS data, including peptide mass fingerprinting and MS/MS search modes and support for accurate mass data; quantitative analysis through isotope labeling such as ICAT; de novo sequencing; configurable multi-experiment summary reports that facilitate complex studies such as differential expression comparisons; extensive toolset for result validation and state tracking, with linkage to the raw MS data supporting each summary element; and support for spectral analysis from most major instrument vendors.
In addition, the SpectrumMill software includes output features to make the protein data more meaningful to biologists and biochemists.
