Q: How does acoustic ejection mass spectrometry run a 384 micro well plate in 10 mins?

During drug discovery scientists need to screen hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, of potential drug candidates as quickly and reliably as possible, allowing them to perform rapid selection of the best possible candidates for treatment of a given disease or condition from vast libraries of potential candidates. This allows pharmaceutical companies to make data-driven decisions early in the drug discovery process, saving time and money, and potentially getting their drug to market faster than with more traditional approaches. Common analytical techniques are limited by either sample throughput or accuracy of results. 

A: Acoustic Ejection Mass Spectrometry (AEMS) couples rapid sampling with mass spectrometry detection to overcome these limitations.

The Echo® MS+ system uses acoustic ejection mass spectrometry (AEMS) technology. Samples are placed into a compatible well plate which is held in the Echo® MS+ system’s autosampler. Here sound energy is applied to the bottom of each well individually. The sound energy causes reproducible droplets to be ejected from the well for capture in a carrier solvent of the OPI for dilution and transfer to the mass spectrometer’s source. From this point, the diluted sample is ionized using conventional electrospray ionization, ready for detection.

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