Northeastern and Thermo Fisher Scientific team up

Research partnership aims to apply MS technology to life science research.

North­eastern University’s Bar­nett Insti­tute of Chem­ical and Bio­log­ical Analysis (USA) recently announced a new collaboration with Thermo Fisher Scientific. The partnership will focus on the application of MS technology to life science research, specifically three main areas: com­plex protein char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, devel­opment of new methods for ana­lyzing trace amounts of bio­markers in pro­teomic sam­ples and methods for ana­lyzing biosim­ilar drugs.

Researchers joined together for the recent announcement; a dis­cus­sion of the partnership’s expected impact, and a tour of the Bar­nett lab­o­ra­tory also took place. Barry Karger, Director of the Institute and Ian Jardine, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Thermo Fisher, presented their research highlights from previous years and also ideas for future investigations. Jardine stated, “We’re only at the begin­ning of this journey in the appli­ca­tion of MS to life sciences.”

This is not the first time that the two institutions have worked together. In 1998, to celebrate the Bar­nett Institute’s 25th anniver­sary, North­eastern and Thermo Fisher set up a young scholars pro­gram aimed at estab­lishing the careers of ana­lyt­ical chemists.

Murray Gibson, Dean of the Col­lege of Sci­ence, where the Bar­nett Insti­tute is based, discussed the partnership, “Building on rela­tion­ships with instru­ment and biotech com­pa­nies is a way not only to pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties for coop and training, but also to bring to us the state-​​of-​​the-​​art technology that allows us to do the most exciting sci­ence.”

Dan Shine, Pres­i­dent of the chro­matog­raphy and MS divi­sion at Thermo Fisher stated, “This is a tremen­dous part­ner­ship, and we’re hon­ored to be working closely with a leading insti­tute like North­eastern. These rela­tion­ships are really impor­tant to helping us under­stand the require­ments of leading aca­d­e­mics and helping us improve the instru­men­ta­tion we make, improve our soft­ware, and improve our appli­ca­tions knowl­edge.”

Karger explained the importance of future research collaborations between academia, government and industry, “We think this is crit­ical, because nobody has all the answers.”

Source: Life science research partnership targets new breakthroughs.