A Medical Device Daily

Applied Biosystems (Foster City, California), its joint-venture partner, MDS Analytical Technologies (Sunnyvale, California), and Premier Biosoft International (Palo Alto, California) reported that they have signed a co-marketing and reseller agreement to deliver solutions for glycobiology research worldwide.

Glycobiology is the study of sugars or saccharides known as glycans, which play essential roles as components in all living organisms. Researchers use life science tools to investigate glycans to further understand biology, such as how sugars affect the structure and activities of proteins.

To offer integrated workflows to glycomics researchers, Applied Biosystems/MDS Analytical Technologies will co-market and resell Premier Biosoft's SimGlycan, a high throughput glycan mass finger-printing tool, for use with Applied Biosystems/MDS Analytical Technologies' mass spectrometers, including the 4800 Plus MALDI TOF/TOF Analyzer, the 4000 QTRAP System and the QSTAR Elite System.

SimGlycan is a data analysis tool that predicts glycan structure using MS/MS data acquired by mass spectrometry. It matches the MS/MS spectra with its own comprehensive, robust and annotated database to predict glycan structure. A simple search generates a list of all the probable glycans close to the actual sample. Structures are scored using a proprietary algorithm to help judge the distinction between close matches. In addition, each structure is mined for associated glycan class, reaction, pathway and enzyme, saving users valuable time, money and the frustration of laborious manual annotation.