Waters Corporation and PREMIER Biosoft International Announce Collaboration for Advancing Lipidomics Research

Firms Collaborate to Redefine State of the Art of Lipidomics Research by Offering Ion Mobility based Lipid Analysis Solutions

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Waters Corporation

Jun 06, 2011, 08:30 ET

DENVER, June 6, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Waters Corporation (NYSE: WAT) today announced it has entered into a non-exclusive co-marketing and reselling agreement with PREMIER Biosoft International (Palo Alto, CA) to advance lipidomics research. Waters will offer PREMIER Biosoft's SimLipid® informatics platform for sale with Waters® ACQUITY UPLC® and high-resolution, exact mass SYNAPT® and XEVO® mass spectrometers for lipid analysis. PREMIER Biosoft released its SimLipid software product earlier in 2011.

Responding to the challenges set forth by leading lipid researchers, Waters exact mass UPLC/MS systems for lipid analysis combine UltraPerformance LC® and proprietary ion mobility mass spectrometry technology with advanced lipidomics informatics for comprehensive and rigorous lipid characterization from complex biological samples. Ion mobility, found only with Waters SYNAPT mass spectrometers, brings an additional, orthogonal dimension of sample separation to lipid analysis. This technology provides greater levels of specificity and class separation to lipid analysis, including the separation of isobaric/isomeric lipid species.

"Waters UPLC, ion mobility, advanced mass spectrometry and informatics technologies have created a lipid analysis platform which provides greater insight into our complex biological investigations than ever before," says Professor Jeremy K. Nicholson, Head of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College London, a Waters Center of Innovation. Waters Centers of Innovation Program recognizes and supports the research of leading scientists and institutions around the world in numerous application areas including metabolomics and lipidomics.

PREMIER Biosoft's SimLipid augments the Waters UPLC -- HDMSe (ion mobility -- mass spectrometry) data by performing an exact mass precursor ion search to generate a list of lipid candidates which are then ranked by comparing diagnostic product ions observed in the high energy HDMSe data and structure specific in-silico fragment ions from the SimLipid database. Interpretation of spectra has been made easy by annotating matched peaks with corresponding compounds. SimLipid generates portable reports and images in different file formats such as XLS, CSV, HTML, JPEG and PNG to facilitate dynamic information sharing. In addition, each structure is mined for its associated class, reaction, pathway and enzyme, so that scientists don't waste time and money on laborious manual annotation.

According to Kay Brown, President at PREMIER Biosoft, "PREMIER Biosoft is very pleased to work with Waters Corporation to offer a whole product solution to the lipidomics and glycobiology research community."

In a 2010 press release, Waters and PREMIER Biosoft announced an agreement to co-market PREMIER Biosoft's SimGlycan data analysis software tool. SimGlycan is a high throughput data analysis tool for glycan and glycopeptide structure elucidation.

Under the terms of the new agreement, Waters will continue to sell and support its UPLC and mass spectrometers for lipid analysis, while PREMIER Biosoft will market its characterization tool to Waters customers analyzing lipid data.

For further details on PREMIER Biosoft's SimLipid informatics tool, please visit: http://www.premierbiosoft.com/lipid/index.html

About Lipidomics

Lipidomics is an emerging field of systems biology being applied to disease research, drug discovery and biomarker identification. It involves identification and quantitation of thousands of pathways and networks of cellular lipid molecular species and their interactions with other lipids, proteins and other moieties in-vivo. Mass spectrometry is one of the most sophisticated technologies for identification and quantitation of lipids from complex biological samples. Mass spectrometry based lipidomics produces a large amount of data. Analyzing lipid data which includes structural identification and quantitation is a major challenge and the slowest step in any lipidomics workflow. SimLipid is automatic analysis software developed to address these challenges.

About PREMIER Biosoft International
(www.premierbiosoft.com)

Founded in 1994, PREMIER Biosoft International is led by computer scientists and biologists dedicated to producing cutting edge intuitive software for research in life sciences. The company's goal is to study the most recent innovations in life sciences and translate them into software products to aid research.

About Waters Corporation (www.waters.com)

For over 50 years, Waters Corporation (NYSE: WAT) has created business advantages for laboratory-dependent organizations by delivering practical and sustainable innovation to enable significant advancements in such areas as healthcare delivery, environmental management, food safety, and water quality worldwide.

Pioneering a connected portfolio of separations science, laboratory information management, mass spectrometry and thermal analysis, Waters technology breakthroughs and laboratory solutions provide an enduring platform for customer success.

With revenue of $1.64 billion in 2010 and 5,400 employees, Waters is driving scientific discovery and operational excellence for customers worldwide.

Waters, Synapt, ACQUITY, ACQUITY UPLC, UPLC, UltraPerformance LC, and Xevo are trademarks of Waters Corporation. SimLipid and SimGlycan are registered trademarks of PREMIER Biosoft.

SOURCE Waters Corporation