MILFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--At a ceremony at Colorado State University’s Fort Collins, CO campus, Waters Corporation officially welcomed the University’s Proteomics and Metabolomics Facility into its Centers of Innovation Program. Under the direction of Dr. Jessica Prenni, the facility has earned a reputation for excellence in applying non-targeted proteomics and metabolomics using liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry (LC/MS) to advance food and veterinary science and clinical and microbacterial research.
“We take pride and ownership that our discoveries will have a meaningful impact and we recognize the importance of partnerships with corporations like Waters,” said Alan Rudolph, Vice President for Research, Colorado State University. “We’ve seen the impact on science that instrumentation –microfluidics separations, higher resolution, and the ability to look at complex mixtures – can have both here and abroad. We are really excited about our partnership with Waters as a way to fuel new discoveries and allow us to live up to our land grant ethos.”
As part of its academic mission, the Proteomics and Metabolomics Facility develops and validates assays, tools and techniques. In the last year, Dr. Prenni’s team has assisted over 200 principal investigators in 24 departments at six colleges.
“One of the biggest advantages of our partnership with Waters is early access to technology, such as the ionKey/MS system,” said Dr. Prenni. “Using this technology, we developed an assay for one of our clients for five clinically-relevant steroidal compounds which has been applied to a clinical data set of 1,000 serum samples from post-menopausal women. The method showed significant increases in sensitivity, decreases in solvent consumption as compared to traditional assays as well as an ability to separate structural isomers. This project is a great example of how our collaboration with Waters has led to the development of new technologies and allowed us to advance the way we answer important biological questions.”
One industry closely watching the output of Dr. Prenni’s team is the brewing industry. A recent study with their collaborators at the New Belgium Brewery led to a better understanding of the molecular changes that occur in beer during the aging process and has been applied to the development of improved brewing methods that can potentially increase beer stability over a longer time and under a range of storage conditions.
Also on hand to congratulate Dr. Prenni and her team was Eric Fotheringham, Director, Waters Centers of Innovation Program. “Today we applaud the work of Dr. Prenni and her team. Their novel applications for analytical technology are leading to faster scientific progress and we look forward to a long-lasting working relationship.”
Fulfilling its mission requires a variety of state-of-the art instrumentation. The Proteomics and Metabolomics Facility is equipped with a Waters Xevo® G2 QToF, Xevo G2 ToF, and two Xevo TQ-S systems -- all paired with Waters ACQUITY UPLC® systems, an instrument for separating sample components from one another and precisely delivering the analytes one by one into the mass spectrometer where the amounts of each analyte are measured and identified.
In conjunction with the Centers of Innovation Program ceremony, Colorado State University (CSU) and Waters Corporation co-organized a symposium on Advances in Biological Mass Spectrometry featuring presentations by Dr. Prenni and Dr. Karen Dobos of CSU, Dana Sedin of the New Belgium Brewery and Professor Vladimir Shulaev of the University of North Texas.
About Metabolomics
Metabolomics is the study of molecules known as metabolites that are produced by living organisms as the result of biological processes. Metabolites have been used as biomarkers for decades. The presence of sugar in urine as a diagnostic test for diabetes is one of the oldest examples. Mass spectrometry is an extremely sensitive means of studying the full array of metabolites produced by an organism. From a few microliters of blood or extract scientists are beginning to learn a great deal about the biological underpinnings of disease processes, the response of an organism like a plant to an environmental stress or the response of a test subject to the administration of a drug simply by measuring the type and concentration of metabolites present.
The non-targeted approach to metabolite profiling championed by Dr. Prenni allows her team to separate all the metabolites in a sample over time, measure the masses of all of the metabolite molecules, determine which molecules are different between two sample groups, and process the raw data - chromatographic retention times, accurate masses, and intensity values - for every detected metabolite in the sample to determine which metabolites are statistically significant.
About Colorado State University and the Proteomics and Metabolomics Facility
Colorado State University, located in Fort Collins, CO is a land-grant institution founded in 1870. With a student enrollment of about 31,000, CSU is an established Carnegie Research University and is among the nation’s leading research universities.
The Proteomics and Metabolomics Facility functions as an enabling resource for research and development programs at Colorado State University. The facility strives to build instrumental capabilities that exceed the normal resources of individual research programs, and to make those technologies available as a shared resource. Furthermore, the facility provides an environment rich in expertise and educational resources, and works to foster collaboration across the CSU community
About Waters Centers of Innovation Program
Waters Centers of Innovation Program recognizes and supports the efforts of scientists facilitating breakthroughs in health and life science research, food safety and food science, environmental protection, sports medicine and many other areas. Waters provides scientists and their institutions in the Program with early access to pre-commercialized novel technology that may lead to scientific breakthroughs and jump-start a research project. In other instances, collaborative efforts between Waters experts applications scientists and Program participants have accelerated research in important ways.
Other researchers and research centers recognized by the Waters Centers of Innovation Program include: Professor Ganesh Anand, National University of Singapore; Professor Luiz Claudio Cameron, UniRio, Brazil; Professor David Clemmer, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana; Professor Daniel Tsun-Yee Chiu, Chang Gung University; Dr. Joseph Dalluge, University of Minnesota; Professor Marcos Eberlin, University of Campinas, Brazil; Prof. Chris Elliott, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland; Professor John Engen, Northeastern University, Boston, Mass.; Professor Albert J. Fornace, Jr., Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, Washington, D.C.; Professor David Goodlett and Dr. Maureen Kane, University of Maryland School of Pharmacy; Dr. Frank Gonzalez, National Cancer Institute; Dr. Carlo R. Largiadèr, Inselspital University Hospital; Professor Julie Leary of the University of California – Davis; Professor Amit Kumar Mandal, St. John’s Research Institute, Bangalore, India; Professor John McLean, Vanderbilt University; Professor Arthur Moseley of Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; Professor Jeremy Nicholson, Imperial College London; Dr. Devin Peterson, University of Minnesota; Dr. Serge Rezzi, Nestle Institute of Health Sciences; Dr. Ryan Rogers, Future Fuels Institute, Florida State University; Professor Pauline Rudd, National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training; Professor James Scrivens, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK; Professor Vladimir Shulaev, University of North Texas; Dr. Norman Smith, Kings College London; Professor Sarah Trimpin, Wayne State University; Professor Bert van Bavel, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden; Caroline West and Eric Lesselier, University of Orleans, Orleans, France; and Professor Vicki Wysocki, Ohio State University.
About Waters Corporation (www.waters.com)
For more than 50 years, Waters Corporation (NYSE:WAT) has created business advantages for laboratory-dependent organizations by delivering practical and sustainable innovation to enable significant advancements in such areas as healthcare delivery, environmental management, food safety, water quality, consumer products, and high value-added chemicals worldwide.
Pioneering a connected portfolio of separations science, laboratory information management, mass spectrometry and thermal analysis, Waters technology breakthroughs and laboratory solutions provide an enduring platform for customer success.
With revenue of $1.9 billion in 2013, Waters is driving scientific discovery and operational excellence for customers worldwide.
Waters, XEVO, UPLC, ionKey/MS, ACQUITY UPLC and ACQUITY are trademarks of Waters Corporation.
