Intact Mass Analysis
- Characterize modifications and degradation products
- Identify coeluting proteins or shoulders
- Suitable for proteins and monoclonal antibodies
We offer customized solutions, contact us to discuss your project.
Send us a description of your project and we shall be happy to present you with a solution.
We encourage you to call us or schedule a meeting to discuss your project in detail.
Set up meetingProtein characterization for optimization of manufacturing processes.
Explore customer caseHigh-throughput characterization analysis of antibodies for fast quality assessment
Explore customer caseWe would like to help you as much as possible with your project and therefore provide several kinds of customer support:
By ESI-MS analysis, we first spray the sample in liquid phase through a capillary at high voltage into the MS instrument. This way, we measure the mass over charge ratio (m/z). For large biomolecules, the electrospray process results in multiply protonated molecules with a distribution of ion species at m/z range from 1-3000.
We then determine the protein mass of the molecule using a deconvolution algorithm that calculates the mass of the intact non-protonated protein, peptide, or antibody. The ESI-MS process requires that the sample preparation is quite pure without interfering with salts or detergents.
We can also purify the sample by reversed-phase HPLC (Agilent 1200 system) using a short C8 column before analyzing it on a Q-TOF mass spectrometer (Bruker Maxis Impact system). The mass of the sample is determined by deconvolution of the obtained raw spectra using the MaxEnt algorithm. The high resolution and accuracy of the Q-Tof instrument thus result in a very accurate mass determination within 0-3 Da of the theoretical mass.
For antibodies, we analyze the sample in the intact form and after reduction with DTT.
The chromatographic purity should be >90%.
Avoid detergents and keep buffer concentration at a minimum. LC ESI-MS analysis works on samples containing small amounts of salts or urea, but the best result is obtained with low buffer strength in volatile solvents without detergents.
Please note that intact mass analysis of intact proteins/antibodies by mass spectrometry does NOT work on samples from gels or PVDF membranes.
If your sample contains detergents of any sort, send us a request through the contact form to hear about the analytical capabilities.