Life Science

Excellims develops IMS based instrument for a broad range applications in life sciences. Solving challenging problems in biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries is one focus of Excellims recent efforts. Fundamentally, the principles of IMS suggest that it can rapidly separate and identify chemical and biological substances based on their gas phase mobility, which is one signature of their molecular structure. The ion mobility of any molecule under a constant electric field and with a drift gas present is related to the size and shape (chemical structure) of the ion, not just its mass. In addition, varying the composition of the gas in the ion drift chamber can give us additional information about the ion based on its interaction with dilute chemical modifiers added to the drift gas.

Since the building blocks of living systems (amino acids, sugars etc.) are chiral in nature, metabolic and regulatory processes are sensitive to the stereochemistry of interactions. Molecular chirality affects a wide range of biological functions through precise molecular recognition at enzyme receptors and other natural binding sites within biological systems. Different rates and selectivity have been realized in many biological systems between different enantiomers. Progress in the fields of genomics and proteomics has led to a molecular understanding of biological processes where the stereochemistry of drug/protein interactions has become more important than ever before. Assembly of proteins, drug interactions, and substrate recognition are a few of the vital physiological interactions that depend on the chiral orientation of molecules.

Recent research by Washington State University and Excellims scientists clearly demonstrate that by modifying the drift gas with chiral molecules, ion mobility spectrometry can provide a novel and rapid separation technique for chiral compounds. Similar to chiral chromatography and capillary electrophoresis, the ability of chiral ion mobility spectrometry to examine enantiomeric mixtures is based upon the interaction of analytes with neutral chiral modifiers. Excellims has developed a rapid chiral separation and characterization instrument, an electrospray ionization - chiral ion mobility spectrometer - mass spectrometer. This unique system can not only separate chiral molecules in milliseconds, but also reduce method development time to a fraction of that normally required. Great separation speed and easy method development using the ESI-CIMS-MS, a special configration based on Excellims RA4100, make it the method of choice for many applications where analysis time is a critical consideration. It can be used to directly measure enantiomeric excess of chiral ingredients in pharmaceutical products and may serve to increase throughput for chirality measurements in drug discovery when hundreds of drug compounds are being screened as drug candidates.

CIMS-MS, separating and identifying chiral compounds in seconds, can potentially replace chiral chromatography when chiral analysis time is a critical consideration. Rapid enantiomeric excess measurement is essential in drug discovery process and QA/QC of pharmaceutical products. The CIMS-MS can also be used for the analysis of chiral compounds in complex mixtures for quantification and detection of biomarkers, metabolites and other bioactive compounds in biomedical research. Additional research on ways to modify the drift gas based on other types of interactions between molecules of interest and gas phase modifiers is ongoing.

Electrospray ionization - ion mobility spectrometry (ESI-IMS) was first demonstrated at Washington State University in the late 1980s. Numerous researchers have demonstrated the potential of using ESI-IMS for the analysis of a variety of semi-volatile and nonvolatile compounds, including environmental contaminants, illicit drugs, pharmaceuticals, chemical warfare agents, explosives, and others. All of these researchers used "homemade" ESI-IMS systems. Excellims GA2100 is the World's first commercial ESI-HPIMS and it is ideal for applications that require speed, specificity and sensitivity. The GA2100 requires little or no solvents, making it operationally cost effective and environmentally friendly. Electrospray IMS is ideal for a wide range of applications including direct water analysis, pharmaceutical cleaning validation, and general chemical analysis. In many application areas, electrospray IMS can be used instead of HPLC; it is much faster than HPLC, and method development is easily accomplished as typical analyses are complete in seconds. The GA2100 may also be used as a selective and sensitive detector for other separation tools.