Innovative Products to Improve Mass Spectrometry from ASMS

The 72^nd annual American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) conference on mass spectrometry and allied topics was held in Anaheim, CA on June 2–6, 2024. The meeting attracted thousands of mass spectrometrists from around the world to share their results, findings, ideas, and challenges. ASMS is a great place to learn and share. As mass spectrometers (MS) become more accessible, the range of scientific projects that benefit from their ability to produce highly specific chemical data continues to expand.

One of the highlights of the ASMS conference is the new products that are introduced to the community. These new products cover a wide range of experiments using mass spectrometry ranging from amazing new mass spectrometers to sample preparation, to new calibrants. A few of these innovative products caught our attention and will be highlighted as the editor’s picks.

New mass spectrometer instruments

One highlight of ASMS is seeing highly innovative new mass spectrometers. There were several new instruments announced this year.

The new Bruker timsTOF Ultra 2 enhances the high performance achieved by combining ion mobility and quadrupole time-of-flight technology (TOF). The combination of this MS and the CaptiveSpray Ultra 2 ion source provides significant improvements in sensitivity and analysis speed. The instrument can characterize over 1,000 proteins from 25 pg of sample and analyze over 1,000 samples per day. According to Rohan Thakur, president of Bruker Daltonics, Bruker’s intentions in MS are to provide “enough information to drive a decision. Being information-rich is more important than being information-heavy. Researchers need statistically significant data, and at this point, we are fighting noise.” Professor Nikolai Slavov from Northeastern University is using this new instrument to explore single cells and says, “the timsTOF Ultra 2 can quantify over 1,000 proteins from a single cell. We can analyze at scale to quantify proteins from cells and better understand biological functionality.”

Bruker also introduced the new neofleX MALDI TOF/TOF instrument. It is designed to deliver state-of-the-art results for tissue imaging. It contains the 10kHz smartbeam laser and has improved imaging detectors to enhance robustness, stability, and reproducibility. The improved TOF/TOF configuration delivers better sensitivity, speed, and sequence coverage. The goal, according to Manuel Bauer, vice president of project management, consumables, and automation at Bruker, is “to push the MALDI imaging frontier by identifying colocalization of proteins, glycans, lipids, etc. To produce a real multiomics workhorse.”

Agilent introduced a new higher sensitivity triple quadrupole MS, the 7010D GC/TQ. Using the new HES 2.0 source improves the handling of the GC column eluent and can deliver attogram sensitivity. It has an outstanding linear dynamic range that covers five orders of magnitude. The instrument can generate limits of quantitation (LOQ) down to 0.01 ppm. The new instrument also contains onboard intelligence using AI that can save operator time and improve performance. Some aspects of the AI programming include checking for carryover, rapid screening, ensuring results are on scale with the calibration, and an effective automatic instrument autotune. Agilent’s motivation is well expressed by Ken Suzuki, president of Agilent’s MS division: “Make it as easy as possible. The explosion of scientific discoveries requires the ability to explore many unknowns. Simplicity has to happen.”

The new Waters Xevo MRT is a benchtop MS that can maintain 80,000 resolution from one to 20 Hz, delivers better than 500 ppb mass accuracy at speed, and has a linear dynamic range over five orders of magnitude. It contains a novel high-speed collision cell, a gridless multireflection TOF providing four meters of flight path, and a new detection system. It has demonstrated a mass error of 1.01 ppm RMS over 200 injections with an 8.4 percent RSD in measured peak area. “The Xevo MRT is a uniquely powerful mass spectrometer for discovery omics that delivers exceptional performance and speed without compromise,” said James Langridge, PhD, senior director of the discovery, characterization, and imaging portfolio at Waters Corporation. “This game-changing technology provides high-resolution time-of-flight data independent of spectral acquisition rate. We’ve scaled it into a benchtop platform that is compact enough for most labs, yet has the high throughput and resolving power to solve challenging problems in biomedical research and large-cohort epidemiological studies.”

Thermo introduced the new Stellar MS. It is a high-capacity, high-speed LC/MS instrument that is ideal for verification of analytes identified with high-resolution mass spectrometry. The instrument features improved ionization efficiency, automatic calibrations, improved ion utilization, a dual-pressure ion trap for fast and sensitive analyses, and single ion sensitivity. Using a Stellar MS, researchers were able to validate an assay in only three days.

Shimadzu introduced a new workhorse GC/MS instrument, the GCMS-QP2050. This innovative instrument is designed to provide high reliability, significant sensitivity, effective stability, and much-needed speed for labs requiring quick chemical identification. It can deliver high scan speeds of up to 30,000 u per second. The instrument has a compact footprint and is easy to set up and use. It serves the needs of very diverse labs. It comes with the new DuraEase source, which enables very rapid maintenance and cleaning while providing high sensitivity and great durability. It comes with all stainless-steel internal plumbing, making it ready for hydrogen carrier gas right out of the box.

The SCIEX 7500+ is their latest triple quadrupole innovation. It delivers high sensitivity and rapid analyses and is capable of completing 800 multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) measurements per second. The innovations included with the instrument include new mass guard technology that reduces contamination and a newly designed DJet+ assembly that is easy to remove and clean. The instrument also has new functionality in the operating system that tracks performance and accelerates decision-making. According to Joe Fox, president of SCIEX: “We have seen demand increase for testing on more and more sample types at high sensitivity. The SCIEX 7500+ system meets these needs by ensuring the highest performance can be maintained for longer and across these increasingly complex matrices.”

Sample preparation and instrument calibration

Hamilton introduced the new MassXtract automated sample preparation station. It contains pre-developed liquid handling options that provide quick implementation into most MS labs. It is designed to work with 96 well plates. The new station contains most of the actions that are required for typical MS workflows, including a 2,000 G centrifuge, a positive pressure manifold that can be used for needs like solid phase extraction (SPE), a shaker and heater, and an evaporation module. Heather Green, market segment leader at Hamilton, describes their motivation when developing this new product: “Throughout its development, we prioritized creating a platform capable of fully automating mass spectrometry sample preparation in the smallest footprint possible.”

The new full evaporative vacuum extraction, or FEVE, from Entech provides an innovative way to do sample extraction. It uses different sorbent pens optimized for different analyses and can be done in multiple stages. This approach enables greatly improved extraction for polar and non-polar compounds. It uses the volatizing matrix, which reduces the volume of gas by up to 30 times. The FEVE works best when the sample matrix has low solids and the matrix is relatively volatile. One of the key advantages of FEVE, according to Daniel Cardin, Jr., is that it is “an alternative to PTV injections—[a] much cleaner approach that reduces how often the column or source needs to be changed.”

The Polymer Factory has established new MS calibrants for ion mobility (IM) MS experiments called SpheriCal IM-MS calibration and tuning standards. These standards allow effective calibration of IM-MS experiments up to 1,800 Å² with several charge states and a mass range between 295–3650 u. The product can be purchased in three different ranges:

High range = 605–3650 u with collisional cross section (CCS) from 320–1750 Å²
Medium range = 605–2390 u with CCS from 220–975 Å²
Low range = 295–1,915 u with CCS from 160–440 Å²

Jens Sommertune, the product manager for SpheriCal IM-MS, asks the MS community to “stop extrapolating and assuming it’s good. [It] could get errors up to 10 percent. Get rid of the error and get true values. Trust in something with a similar CCAS as the analyte.”