Chromatography Forum

Hello everybody!

I need some help. We are going to buy a LC-MS/MS system for high throughtput of biological samples (plasma, serum, urine, tissues).

The DEMOS with the two equipments selected have been OK. Both instruments (ABI 5500 and Agilent 6460) showed the desired sensibility with real samples.

But you know that one thing is a DEMO, running a few biological samples to test sensibility and another thing is the real life, running thousand of biological samples per week.

Has anybody experiencie working with these equipments in these hard conditions?

I've read that ABIs in general are robust with biological samples. But I've not read anything about Agilent 6410 or 6460. Could anyone bring some information related.

Any user experience is appreciated.
Thank you in advanced.
Best regards.

You should take a good look at the respective software and the peak auto-integration capabilities especially at the LOQ/LOD levels... You do want to minimize or even eliminate any need for manual integration...

Ask the sales rep for references that you can talk to. They will give you labs that are having success - not the ones having problems. But that's OK, because they are the kinds of people you would want to get advice from as you strive to succeed as well.

Our lab recently purchased an ABI 5500 QTRAP model which has thus far made us very happy. Before purchasing we tested the 5500 against the best from other companies (Thermo, Agilent, Waters) and our instrument was about four fold more sensitive than any of the other models in quantifying enzyme expression levels in HLMs for targeted proteomics using stable isotope standards. In fact, I will say that Agilent was only able to quantify about one third of the enzymes we required however, our instrumentation is primarily set up at nanoLC flow rates so it's unlikely we will use our system for large scale high throughput analysis. With that said, one thing I would caution about the ABI system (both the 5000 and 5500) is that the Q-Jet system inlet has to be cleaned quite often (after a few hundred samples) that could be time consuming and inconvenient for large scale analysis. However, if you are looking for ultimate sensitivity and reliability, personally I don't think you can do better than the 5500.

Good Luck in your search,

Dave