New collaboration integrates Intabio's Blaze solution with Bruker's mass spectrometers

Intabio, Inc., announced today that it has entered into a collaboration with Bruker to accelerate integration of Intabio's Blaze^™ solution with Bruker's high resolution mass spectrometers (MS). Intabio's Blaze^™ utilizes a proprietary microchip technology to separate, quantitate, and seamlessly transfer intact biotherapeutic proteins by electrospray into a mass spectrometer for molecular identification. Bruker will provide support for Intabio's development of the hardware and software to integrate the Blaze instrument to a Bruker MS.

"We are thrilled to be working with Bruker on the MS interface for our Blaze system. Bruker is an ideal first partner due to the organization's strengths in innovative, high-performance mass spectrometry solutions," said Lena Wu, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Intabio. "Intabio's instrument is designed to operate as a stand-alone for imaged cIEF only, or it can interface with any MS for imaged cIEF-MS analysis. By working directly with Bruker, we can optimize the integration between Blaze and Bruker's MS to provide a more robust solution for our customers."

Rohan Thakur, Ph.D., Executive Vice President for Bruker added:

Bruker's MS ion source design provides the customer with a unique 'ease of use' benefit especially when it comes to coupling separation techniques such as cIEF.  It makes the interface coupling a 'point-and-shoot' combination, allowing the user to focus on high quality data and not spend time adjusting the interface itself.  This benefit serves to improve productivity of this powerful hyphenated technique for protein characterization in biopharma."  

Intabio is developing the first system to seamlessly integrate capillary isoelectric focusing (cIEF) and mass spec, two pillars of analytical methods in biopharmaceutical development and manufacturing. The Blaze solution includes a bench-top instrument, microfluidic chip, reagent kit, and software. Blaze utilizes lab-on-a-chip functionality to integrate (1) separation of protein isoforms by cIEF, (2) real-time, whole-column imaging of protein isoforms for detection and quantitation, and (3) MS sample preparation and delivery of each separated isoform by electrospray into an adjacent mass spectrometer to provide molecular identity. Because the Blaze system can provide an analysis of product quality in minutes and can process 100-fold more samples at a fraction of the cost of more traditional processes, Blaze delivers improved productivity, shortened analytical timelines, and reduced risk of costly therapeutic development failures.

Intabio will launch an early access program for Biopharma customers in late summer 2018 for the Blaze.

Source: https://www.intabio.com/