Nanostream intros Veloce add-on

PASADENA, Calif.—Nanostream Inc. earlier this month rolled out a fraction collector add-on to it Veloce micro parallel liquid chromatography system. The fraction collector was developed in response to customers who were looking to take advantage of the Veloce system as a sample preparation device for mass spec applications.

"I've always believed that the way you develop a technology is to make sure the first version solves a problem and then you let customers drive you to the next thing," says Steve O'Connor, CEO and founder of Nanostream. "That is what happened here."

The fraction collector automates front-end sample preparation for researchers to help them accelerate routine assays that require MS, MS/MS or other, alternate modes of detection. The hope at Nanostream is that the Veloce system, along with the fraction collector can help drug discovery researchers move ADME to earlier in the discovery cycle.

But in order to move ADME, and specifically DMPK, to earlier in the process, there needs to be an increase in throughput. "ADME is responsible for a large portion of attrition and DMPK, especially, is a real bottleneck," says Surekha Vajjhala, director of marketing for Nanostream.

According to the company, increased throughput is created by taking separations offline. This decoupling of the chromatography from detection and quantitation allows researchers to get more "up" time from their MS instrumentation.

"There are a range of applications that can benefit from this," Vajjhala adds. "This includes drug-drug interaction studies, pharmacokinetic profiling, stability assays and others."