Soft Landing

Preparative Mass Spectrometers with Ion Soft-Landing

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Overview

Prosolia's proprietary Ion Soft-Landing (ISL) technology is the process whereby ions of a pre-selected m/z ratio are separated and selectively deposited (by way of a mass spectrometer) onto proprietary surfaces in such a manner that the integrity and (where applicable) biological activity of the ionized molecule is retained. This technology was invented in the laboratory of Dr. R. Graham Cooks at Purdue University and was introduced in a landmark publication in Science in 20031.

To date, using Prosolia’s ISL technology, 1010 molecules of a pure protein can be soft-landed with an analytical mass spectrometer in about ten minutes. For a 60KD protein, this would represent about 1ng of material. With current advances in analytical technology, this amount of material purified by a mass spectrometer is sufficient for use in almost all assays that one would want to perform on the sample.

Currently, mass spectrometers are analytical instruments and have different requirements placed on them compared to conventional separation instruments used for the preparation of purified materials. Mostly because of the inefficiencies in creating protein ions and introducing them into the mass spectrometer, only a few percent of the starting material actually appears at the device’s distal end. Prosolia realizes in order to capture the full capability of the ISL technology, and have a significant impact in the protein array market, the low efficiency of creating and moving ions through a mass spectrometer must be improved. Solutions to these limitations are attainable and Prosolia has created a product development plan to create preparative mass spectrometers.

Initially a single channel preparative mass spectrometer will be developed that will increase the number of ions available to the mass analyzer from the ionization source allowing for higher quantities of material to be soft-landed. This instrument will use a miniature mass analyzer to reduce the size and cost of a preparative instrument. Once the single channel unit has been developed and tested, engineering of a multiplex instrument that expands the system to multiple miniature mass analyzers for the simultaneous soft-landing of ions with different m/z ratios.

Single Channel Preparative Mass
Spectrometer with Ion Soft-Landing

Multiplex Preparative Mass
Spectrometer with Ion Soft-Landing

References:

[1] Ouyang, Z; Takats, Z; Blake, TA; Gologan, B; Guymon, AJ; Wiseman, JM; Oliver, JC; Davisson, VJ; Cooks, RG. Preparing protein microarrays by soft-landing of mass-selected ions. SCIENCE, 2003, 301 (5638): 1351-1354.