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Multiple techniques, many different biological sources,  one sample preparation technique that delivers

When the seemingly simple endpoint of laboratory research is a  defined mass spectrometry-based analysis this can hide the very complicated sample preparation journey to reach that destination. In AstraZeneca’s Chemical Biology and Proteomics research group, the challenge is producing high quality, reproducible data from a matrix of many technologies and assays coupled with a wide variety of starting materials and sample sizes that could be a few to many hundreds. In establishing the iST technology they have found a solution to this challenge. While saving significant hands-on time and achieving reproducible data quality they have high protein yields, high labelling efficiencies and >5% missed cleavage rates when using isobaric tags for example. The bonus is they are able to use this technique across a wide range of biological sample types and it lends itself to automation for their high throughput projects.

Which challenges were you facing?

The challenge we face in our Chemical  Biology and Proteomics group is the vast amount of technologies and assays we routinely utilize on different sources of biological material which are all Mass Spec based. These assays can sometimes require extensive sample prep hands-on time and sample handling and can span tens to hundreds of samples within a single study.

How did PreOmics help you facilitate the situation?

The PreOmics iST technology provides us with an efficient and robust means to prepare high-quality samples for Mass Spec analysis without sacrificing the quality and depth of the dataset.

What was your Aha-Moment with PreOmics?

After stress testing the iST kits, we quickly found that they reproducibly provide superior quality data in a fraction of the time compared to conventional bottom-up sample preparation protocols. We were also excited to see the breadth of protocols established by PreOmics for the variety of biological material we routinely process and utilize for our work.

What are your plans for the future?

We look forward to integrating the  iST kits with automated large-scale experiments to leverage large cohort studies with the reproducibility of the  kits to dig deeper into the proteome and provide high statistical power behind our scientific discoveries.

Why would you recommend PreOmics?

The iST kits and protocols are extremely straight forward to use and have been optimized to provide low CVs and high protein recovery. We typically observe <5% missed-cleavage rates, and >99% labelling efficiencies for those experiments that utilize isobaric tags.