Thermo Fisher Scientific Showcased Advanced Proteomics Research Solutions at HUPO 2016

At the Human Proteome Organization World Congress (HUPO) 2016 in Taiwan, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., the world leader in serving science, showcased a range of solutions designed to accelerate innovation and discovery in the most demanding proteomics research applications. The featured technologies were presented at the 15th HUPO World Congress, September 18-22, Taipei International Convention Center.

“The field of proteomics is growing faster than ever, with capabilities extending to personalized medicine applications,” said Ken Miller, Vice President of Research Product Marketing, Life Sciences Mass Spectrometry, Thermo Fisher Scientific. “Our customers continue to push the boundaries of discovery in proteomics. At this conference, customers are presenting their methods to detect and quantify thousands of proteins in large sample sets to discover disease biomarkers, profile samples for personalized medicine databases and to unravel complex disease mechanisms.”

Thermo Fisher highlights at HUPO 2016 included:

• Orbitrap-based MS systems on display. Orbitrap-based MS systems offers advanced proteome profiling and structure analysis capabilities. The Q Exactive Hybrid Quadrupole-Orbitrap mass spectrometer and Thermo Scientific Orbitrap Fusion Lumos Tribrid mass spectrometer systems represent the ultimate level in performance in terms of precise, accurate detection and quantitation of proteins using label-free (LFQ), data independent (DIA) and tandem mass tag (TMT).
• KingFisher Presto sample purification system. The new KingFisher Presto sample purification system is designed to automate the isolation of targeted nucleic acids and proteins for high-throughput laboratories. The new system provides a robust solution for reliable purification of DNA, RNA and proteins, and its small footprint enables configurations for a range of applications.
• A novel antibody testing and verification methodology. The methodology, which uses immunoprecipitation-mass spectrometry (IP-MS), was designed to help identify the best antibodies to study proteins. The new antibody verification pipeline will be leveraged with other existing platforms to test the specificity of antibodies in the Thermo Fisher portfolio in accordance with the recently published guidelines in Nature Methods for antibody validation. The guidelines, developed to address an unmet need for antibody specificity, functionality and reproducibility, were developed by the International Working Group on Antibody Validation (IWGAV), an independent group of international scientists studying protein biology.

In addition, Thermo Fisher hosted several workshops which included;

• High-Throughput Multiplexed Quantitative Proteomics for Personalized Medicine Applications. In this session, Loïc Dayon from Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences, Switzerland, discussed the clinical-scale discovery of proteomics in human bodily fluids via high-throughput quantitative pipelines for clinical research and biomarker discovery. Also in this seminar, Bernd Wollscheid from the Institute of Molecular Systems Biology, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, gave an overview of the Zurich-Cancer-Maps project, an initiative aimed to generate a searchable ‘Digital Biobank’ from clinical specimens. Wollscheid also shared details regarding the conversion of biopsy samples into digital protein profiles using data independent analysis (DIA) on Orbitrap mass spectrometers, and the potential use of these profiles for cancer research.
• Sweet Revolution: Analytical Tools for the Characterization of Glycans and Glycoproteins. Sergey Vakhrushev from the Department of Cellular Molecular Medicine, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, presented on the discovery and application of simple cell glycoproteins, including how they can be applied to the analysis of human cell lines, body fluids and tissues. Additionally, Christopher Ashwood from Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, presented the use of Trap-HCD methods for the detection of lower mass range glycan fragments, and the additional value provided by these for glycan characterization.
• Defining Biological Phenotypes by Quantifying Small Molecular Changes. Jenny Van Eyk from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, USA, discussed a dual-labelling mass spectrometric approach to improve detection of post-translational cysteine modification by S-nitrosation. Also in this session, Daniel Lopez-Ferrer from Thermo Fisher demonstrated how DDA mass spectrometric analysis outperforms DIA technology, and how DDA acquisition can be used to achieve high peptide quantification.