The poster highlights some of the many innovations implemented in this unique instrument: Minimized volumes save cycle time and contaminated surface. An optimized wash procedure for most effective and quick cleaning. An injection mechanism that protects hydrophilic analytes from the harms of pressure fluctuations. And waste liquid management that keeps your lab bench clean and tidy!
Earlier this year, our customers at Pfizer and the team from Sound Analytics set up a “cap-flow” system using the Zirconium Ultra pump, LS-1 autosampler, and Sciex’ new OptiFlow ion source. The poster was presented at ASMS 2018 in San Diego, and is now available for download here:
Poster: Design and Integration of a High-Performance Micro-flow LC-MS/MS System
A typical setup as seen in our previous application note employs three pumps – one for loading the sample out of the autosampler’s sample loop, one for diluting the sample’s organic solvent with water for trapping, and one for the analytical gradient, eluting the concentrated analytes off the trapping column onto an analytical column for separation.
We optimized this design a little, replacing the loading and dilution pumps by a single pump. See how it works in our new animation (turn on sound and/or subtitles):
Amyloid peptides (Abeta; Aβ) result from cleavage of amyloid precursor protein (APP) by beta and gamma secretase.The 42-amino acid variant, amyloid β peptide 1–42 is a widely accepted key biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) together with the total tau (T-tau) and phosphorylated tau (P-tau) protein. Diagnostic accuracy of the Aβ 1–42 /Aβ 1–40 ratio in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)
compared to the concentration of Aβ 1–42 alone was found to be even more significant.
Currently these peptides are analyzed routinely in CSF by immunoassays, but in recent years, liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) has been investigated for the quantification of Aβ1-38, Aβ1-40, and Aβ1–42.
[Blennow 2010, Lewczuk 2015, Lame 2011]
Figure 1: Solution structure of the Alzheimer’s disease amyloid beta-peptide (1-42)
Our neighbour CRO, Swiss BioQuant, use the Zirconium pump with a new scheme for loading and analyzing samples at the same time using the same binary pump. Dead times of the MS are greatly reduced, so they save a lot of instrument time while achieving exceptional sensitivity and precision.
In our long history of Micro- and Nano-HPLC product developments, we had the chance to collect experience using many approaches on how to fit a thin glass tube into a large (1/16″) stainless steel port, which is what many HPLC and UHPLC systems employ to this day.
