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Analytical Chemistry

Inside Instrumentation

Partnerships between manufacturers and academic researchers advance instrument development

by Celia H. Arnaud
July 9, 2007 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 85, Issue 28

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Credit: Photo by Craig Bailey
Engen (right) and Waters chat at the opening of the Northeastern University lab named in honor of Waters.
Credit: Photo by Craig Bailey
Engen (right) and Waters chat at the opening of the Northeastern University lab named in honor of Waters.

Instrument companies can't conjure their products out of thin air. They need some way to figure out what products to make and how to make them. An increasingly popular way for companies to glean this information is by investing in academic centers where they collaborate with their customers to gain direct knowledge of what is needed. These arrangements can be winning propositions for both sides.

Waters Corp. is involved with a number of such centers around the world. Most recently, the company helped equip a Northeastern University laboratory in Boston that has been named for company founder James L. Waters. John R. Engen, associate professor of chemistry and chemical biology, heads the collaboration at Northeastern. Engen helps Waters think about what instrumentation is needed to solve real-world problems involving proteins. He then helps put the instruments through their paces and provides feedback to the company. Such an arrangement gives Engen a sneak peek at instrumentation and software advances before they hit the market.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Waters is collaborating with Jeremy K. Nicholson at Imperial College London, where the company supplied the Waters Laboratory of Molecular Spectroscopy with chromatography and mass spectrometry (MS) instruments. The Imperial College collaboration is investigating large-scale metabolomics as a way to identify population trends in diseases such as diabetes.

Such collaborations are becoming important to Waters, says Brian W. Smith, vice president for MS business operations at Waters. "They allow us to work with the key thought leaders in the industry, people who have a vision of where our tools and technologies can really make a difference," he says.

Another such facility is the University of Cincinnati/Agilent Technologies Metallomics Center of the Americas. The center, which opened in January, is equipped and funded by Agilent Technologies and run by University of Cincinnati chemistry professor Joseph A. Caruso. The center emerged from a long-standing relationship between the two.

One of the key people at Agilent for the collaborations is Rudolf Grimm, proteomics and metabolomics market development manager. "I wanted to push a new research area, the area of metallomics and metalloproteomics," he says. "This is a neglected research area and hence a new business for us."

Agilent equipped the facility with a range of instruments for liquid chromatography, inductively coupled plasma (ICP) MS, and microfluidics-based high-performance LC-MS, which will be used to study the role of metals in proteins. From his desk in California, Grimm helps design research projects to be carried out in Cincinnati.

In particular, Grimm hopes to bring ICP-MS to the attention of biologists. "ICP-MS is called an inorganic mass spec tool. That's why biologists don't know about it," Grimm says. "My goal is to create that awareness and collaborate with key people like Joe Caruso to solve real biological questions."

The metallomics center exemplifies the value of true partnerships between universities and corporations, Caruso says. "More often than not, we find these relationships somewhat one-sided, with more value added for the university. This one, however, is a true partnership where each can strengthen the other's goals."

Most such collaborations involve centers located at an academic institution. Thermo Fisher Scientific takes a different approach at its Biomarker Research in Mass Spectrometry (BRIMS) Center, located in Cambridge, Mass.

The BRIMS Center, which is staffed by Thermo Fisher employees, started as a collaboration between Thermo and Massachusetts General Hospital focusing on biomarker discovery. The company plans to broaden the scope to clinical and diagnostic applications. "We are trying to bring mass spectrometry into the clinic," says Mary F. Lopez, director of the center.

As a technology showcase for Thermo Fisher, the new emphasis at the center is developing and demonstrating workflows that incorporate reagents and consumables from the Fisher side of the business with instruments from the Thermo side.

The BRIMS Center has already contributed to new products from Thermo Fisher. The Sieve software for label-free protein quantitation, which the company launched last year, was developed at BRIMS. This year, the center collaborated with other groups within Thermo Fisher to develop new protein-labeling reagents.

Although its relationship with Mass General has ended, the BRIMS Center will continue to collaborate with academic scientists. The center is negotiating three new major collaborations that Lopez hopes to announce later this year. "We're going to choose collaborators who are well-known, key opinion leaders in the clinical realm," she says. They plan to develop workflows and protocols that their collaborators can validate in clinical trials.

Ultimately, such collaborations are about advancing science. "Deep down, we're all scientists," Smith says. "If we can see our tools and technologies advancing a new therapy or diagnostic to market, then intellectually we're very excited as well."

Inside Instrumentation is written by Celia H. Arnaud. Contact her via e-mail to instrumentation@acs.org.

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