Applied Biosystems to co-market glycan analysis tool

Applied Biosystems has agreed to deliver glycobiology research solutions with joint-venture partner MDS Analytical Technologies and Premier Biosoft International.

Under the terms of the agreement, Applied Biosystems and MDS plan to co-market and resell Premier’s SimGlycan, a high-throughput glycan mass fingerprinting tool designed for use with their mass spectrometers.

A data analysis tool that predicts glycan structure using MS/MS data acquired by mass spectrometry, SimGlycan matches the MS/MS spectra with its own annotated database to predict glycan structure.

Dr Lydia Nuwaysir, senior product manager at Applied Biosystems, suggested that combining Premier Biosoft’s product with her firm’s instruments would enable the glycomics research community "to take full advantage of the unique capabilities of the 4800, Q TRAP and QSTAR systems for glycostructure analysis".

"Protein glycosylation is one of the most common types of post-translational modifications," she added.

"Full characterisation is particularly important for biopharmaceuticals because, ultimately, the type and extent of glycosylation can affect protein structure and activity."

Researchers in the field of glycobiology – the study of essential sugars or saccharides known as glycans – use life science tools to investigate how sugars affect the structure and activities of proteins.