ESA Inc. and Applied Biosystems Reach Joint Marketing and Development Agreement
ESA, Inc., an international supplier of electrochemical systems (EC) for HPLC, and Applied Biosystems Group, an Applera Corporation business, and MDS Inc., together with their Applied Biosystems/MDS Sciex Instruments partnership, a leading manufacturer and marketer of mass spectrometers (MS) for LC/MS/MS, has announced an agreement to jointly develop a fully integrated software and hardware solution that couples mass spectrometry and coulometric detection.
Coulometric detectors provide an added degree of sensitivity and selectivity to LC/MS users based on the oxidation or reduction of electroactive species. The ESA coulometric technology provides added information about metabolites and complements the electrospray ionization techniques used in LC/MS to accelerate drug discovery.
Under the terms of the agreement, Applied Biosystems and ESA will develop software to incorporate ESA’s Coulochem® III electrochemical detector in the Applied Biosystems Analyst® software and to incorporate Analyst software components in the ESA CoulArray® software to display LC/MS/MS data. The collaboration is expected to provide customers with seamless instrument control and processing tools to integrate LC/MS and electrochemical data for improved identification and characterization of metabolites.
In addition, researchers at both companies will collaborate to develop new combined applications for mass spectrometry and coulometric detection. Furthermore, each company will co-promote the technologies to customers via their respective sales forces, and leverage the current customer base for each technology.
ESA, Inc., is a leading manufacturer and supplier of analytical instruments for the life science, clinical diagnostic, drug discovery and pharmaceutical industries. Founded in 1968, ESA offers a complete line of HPLC systems, components, and advanced detectors, along with a broad range of analytical services. Contact: ESA, Inc., 22 Alpha Road, Chelmsford, MA 01824. Tel: 978-250-7000. Fax: 978-250-7090. Email: info@esainc.com; Web: www.esainc.com
Applied Biosystems is headquartered in Foster City, California. MDS Inc., an international health and life sciences company, is located in Toronto.
