Innovative approach to Mass Spectrometry to provide high speed analysis and high quality of data to the Food Safety and Pharmaceutical industries

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Verdel Instruments Ltd, a spin out company from the University of Warwick, is developing an innovative technology which will allow scientists to obtain detailed structural information for thousands of molecular compounds simultaneously using the new technique called two-dimensional mass spectrometry (2DMS). 2DMS allows a user to fragment a wide range of molecules simultaneously and, at the same time, keep track of which fragments come from which precursor molecules. Effectively, we are able to perform these fragmentation studies in parallel on all compounds at once, rather than serially, with one compound at a time, which greatly speeds up the experiment. While the first versions of the technology were developed on very advanced mass spectrometers and have only been used in academia, we now have developed an approach which is suitable for routine, benchtop mass spectrometers which will be fast enough to provide these comprehensive fragmentation datasets in a few seconds and fast enough to be compatible with chromatographic techniques.The food safety and pharmaceutical industries use mass spectrometry, and similar fragmentation studies, routinely to identify the molecules in their formulations, detect potentially harmful contaminants, and to quantify important compounds. Our new 2DMS technology will greatly improve the data quality and speed for those kinds of analysis. This project will be primarily about testing out our new methodology on a range of samples from the food safety and pharmaceutical industries. The overall goal of this Innovate UK project is to quantitatively determine how, where, and how much this technology will benefit those industries.