Applied Bio launches two new mass spectrometers

Applied Biosystems has launched two new mass spectrometers, which extend the firm's existing product line providing improved performance for proteomics and small molecule applications.

The 3200 Q Trap and the API 3200 LC/MS/MS Systems come with Turbo Source for added sensitivity, throughput, and cost-effectiveness in mass spectrometry-based workflows. These systems are designed for pharmaceutical analysis, clinical research, food and beverage, environmental and forensic markets.

By incorporating the Applied Biosystems Turbo V source and API 4000 LC/MS/MS System-series interface and ionisation sources into a smaller platform, these systems provide increased sensitivity, greater flexibility, and improved ease-of-use when compared to comparably priced instruments.

The ceramic interface of the API 3200 and 3200 Q Trap LC/MS/MS Systems reduces chemical background and improves sensitivity under LC conditions, yielding improved efficiency, relative to older source technologies, especially at higher flow rates.

The API 3200 LC/MS/MS System with Turbo V source is a triple quadrupole for quantitation and analyte detection studies. The system allows for easy method transfer from LC/UV to LC/MS/MS workflows. This method transfer to LC/MS/MS workflows offers the advantages of simplified sample preparation in the pharmaceutical analysis, environmental, and forensic markets.

Additionally, because the Turbo V source family is now compatible with five Applied Biosystems/MDS SCIEX LC/MS/MS systems, method development can be carried out on these new instruments with simple transfer to the higher sensitivity systems.

The 3200 Q Trap System is a hybrid triple quadrupole-linear ion trap for small molecule identification, characterisation and quantification and protein biomarker discovery, validation, and quantification. The system provides greater than two-fold sensitivity increase in linear ion trap mode at all flow rates, and up to a 5-fold signal-to-noise increase in traditional triple quadrupole mode over its predecessor, the Q TRAP LC/MS/MS System.

"The 3200 Q Trap and the API 3200 LC/MS/MS systems add analytical options for customers in the applied markets of environmental, forensic, and food and beverage testing," said Mark Stevenson, division president of the applied markets business for Applied Biosystems.

"Customers in these markets require robust, sensitive systems to identify, for example, contaminants at trace levels, he added."

The 3200 Q TRAP System will be part of the new BIOiTRAQ Systems used for proteomics and biomarker studies and will incorporate the NanoSpray source and nanoflow interface that were originally launched with the 4000 Q TRAP LC/MS/MS system.