Lab equipment maker Waters Corp. introduced two advanced mass spectrometers, Quattro Premier XE and Micromass GCT Premier, as well as a substantial upgrade to its popular MassLynx software in a flurry of new products and upgrades showcased at the 53rd ACS Conference on Mass Spectrometry this spring.

Quattro Premier XE is a tandem quadrupole machine designed for the benchtop and optimized to work with Waters’ Acquity UPLC. Waters says multiple reaction monitoring is possible with acquisition of 100 data points per second without degradation. This should translate into integration of the narrowest chromatographic peaks.

Positive/negative iron mode switching enables researchers to simultaneously analyze acidic and basic compounds in a single run, taking advantage of Acquity’s speed and sensitivity. The Quattro Premier XE is intended for quantitative applications such as bio-analysis, ADME screening, clinical services, and environmental monitoring.

 Waters says its other big instrument introduction, the Micromass GCT’s, features elevated resolution of 7,000 FWHM, which the company claims is better than any other instrument in its class. The combination of high resolution and extended dynamic range makes the instrument suitable for profiling a wide range of sample types, including metabolomic studies, food, flavor and fragrance, and natural products research. The instrument also features fast spectral acquisition rates of 20 scans per second.

At the conference, Waters also debuted MassLynx 4.1 a significantly enhanced version of its widely used mass spec analysis software. Version 4.1 has been integrated with Waters’ NuGenesis SDMS (scientific data management system) 7.0 to store raw mass spectrometry data and processed results over extended periods of time. Users can now centrally store and also re-purpose MassLynx data stored in NuGenesis SDMS to collaborate with one another, saving valuable time and furthering the analytical effort.

MassLynx security architecture was beefed up to support data acquisition over a network. Users may now acquire and save data to a network file server allowing multi-user access to both data and results as opposed to single-user access to data and results on individual workstations. IT administration of data and results is also simplified for greater confidence in meeting compliance regulations.

For use with Quadrupole Enhancements, MassLynx 4.1 Software introduces AutoTune for the Quattro Premier, Quattro micro and ZQ mass spectrometers. AutoTune optimizes instrument settings for resolution and sensitivity. For use with TOF instruments, version 4.1 includes control for the LCT Premier and Q-Tof Premier mass spectrometers.