Interview with Kim Haynes (Waters Corporation) on the new solid-phase extraction tool Oasis PRiME HLB
Could you tell Bioanalysis Zone a little about your career to date and how you ended up in your current role?
Prior to working at Waters Corporation I worked at Bacardi Martini, performing QC of their products. I have now been with Waters Corporation for 15 years; I started in the sales organization in chemistry consumables sales for around 13 years. This involved working in the field with our customers, helping them in their laboratories with their method development and other work. After this I became a business development manager in the Northern district of the US. Last July I moved into my current role as Senior Product Marketing Manager in the chemistry consumables group.
How does the Oasis PRiME HLB work?
The Oasis PRiME HLB was designed to simplify sample preparation. Oasis PRiME HLB has two different protocols: there is a three step protocol for catch and release sample preparation, or there is the faster pass-through two step protocol. Depending on what the customer needs, they can choose which method will work best for them.
What advantages will this platform bring to bioanalytical assays?
Specifically with solid phase extraction (SPE), customers have used five step protocols where you prepare the sorbent that you are using for SPE by doing a condition step first, then an equilibration step, followed by the load, multiple washes, and then finally an elution step.
Oasis PRiME HLB is designed so that you do not have to do the first two steps – the conditioning and the equilibration – so you are automatically shortening your protocol down from five steps to three. In addition to reducing the work load to three steps, the sorbent and design of the Oasis PRiME HLB allows for faster flow and provides cleaner sample eluates. There are also great reductions in time – for instance, if your compare the Oasis PRiME HLB protocol to something like solid supported liquid extraction, you can do your sample clean up in about one third of the time.
What additional features does the PRiME platform have compared to previous Oasis HLB?
Oasis PRiME HLB was designed using the knowledge we had with Oasis HLB technology. The two greatest benefits are the improved speed and ability to provide cleaner eluates. We went above and beyond the water wettable feature that Oasis HLB possesses, allowing users to remove the conditioning and equilibration steps. Oasis PRiME HLB also has faster flows through the device itself, and faster more even flows across the cartridges and 96 well plate. This means that customers do not have to wait for as long for the samples to process. The improved flow through the device also allows for more predictable analyses and sample processing time.
In addition to the faster sample processing time, Oasis PRiME HLB was designed to provide cleaner eluates by removing common matrix interferences (e.g., salts, phospholipids, protein), and is more efficient at this than a traditional SPE device in reversed phase mode.
What do the cleaner eluates mean for LC-MS results?
By producing cleaner eluates, matrix effects are reduced for LC-MS analyses. If you are using mass detection you need to be able to detect the signal of your analyte of interest. Ion suppression caused by phospholipids, salts, proteins and other matrix interferences hinders this. Oasis PRiME HLB removes species responsible for such matrix effects; hence fear of ion suppression due to the matrix effect is reduced.
When can the platform be utilized?
Oasis PRiME HLB will be perfect for customers performing routine analysis; this will be a go to SPE or clean up method for routine analysis. We believe scientists working in the bioanalytical, forensic toxicology and food industry will benefit from the technology.
Those would be our primary markets but I also see some applicability for those working in environmental analysis. So the applications are pretty broad ranging.
What formats will Oasis PRiME HLB be available in?
It will be available in micro-elution plates, macro plates (the larger 96 well plate format i.e. 10 mg and 30 mg bed size), as well as cartridge format for larger capacity applications, from 1 cc all the way up to 6 cc cartridges.
Oasis PRiME HLB will be launched on June 1st 2015, and will be available to customers at the 63rd ASMS Conference on Mass Spectrometry and Allied Topics (America’s Centre, St. Louis, Missouri, May 31st—June 4th, 2015)
Click here to view an application note on the extraction of synthetic cannabinoids from whole blood using the Oasis PRiME HLB.
