Editors at Pittcon awarded an honorable mention to Bruker Daltonics’ apex-ultra MALDI-FTMS platform for drug and metabolite tissue imaging at therapeutic dosing levels. The high sensitivity SmartBeam MALDI ion funnel source, coupled with ultra-high mass resolution FTMS make the apex-ultra ideally suited for tissue imaging of small molecules, including drugs from animals dosed at therapeutic levels, e.g. at 5 mg/kg and lower, according to the company.
The MALDI source of the apex-ultra is the Apollo II dual ESI/MALDI source based on the patented ion funnel technology, which provides the combination of high sensitivity with a one-mouse-click changeover between ESI and MALDI. The addition of the SmartBeam laser technology, developed initially for the Bruker Flex line of TOF/TOFs, creates a MALDI source that provides the necessary 200 Hz repetition rate laser and less than 40 micron spot size, as well as brilliant spectra quality. SmartBeam is also compatible with the full range of matrix choices for MALDI.
The performance of the apex-ultra in the low-m/z region (150 – 2,000 m/z) is exceptional and does not suffer from complications of matrix background, the company reports. With mass resolution greater than 900,000 (at 7 Tesla), the cluttered spectra produced in MALDI imaging of tissue samples are readily dissected, allowing for the first time MALDI-MS imaging of small molecules without the requirement to go to tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS or TOF/TOF) for chemical background suppression. This sensitivity and throughput is due to the enhanced FTMS peak capacity, and is crucial for small molecule imaging in which crowded spectra with closely spaced peak interferences are the norm rather than the exception. In addition, Bruker’s SmartFormula software automatically provides empirical formulae identification for detected molecules.
Filed Under: Drug Discovery
