The Chen Group

We believe that having precise molecular detail of proteins and oligonucleotides is key to our understanding of disease biology and the therapeutics developed to modify it. Combined, Dr.s Compton, Drader and Kelleher have over 60 years of experience in mass spectrometry applied to the analysis of proteins and oligonucleotides and are passionate about enabling the field to have profound impacts on human health and wellness. The core of the group is built around expertise in technology development for complex mixture analysis using Fourier-Transform mass spectrometry (FTMS) for targeted applications in proteomics and natural products chemistry. In technology, we established protein separations, new mass spectrometric hardware, and provided software used by >1000 labs worldwide to harness the value of complex FTMS data with high mass accuracy. As the Director of Mass Spectrometry R&D, Dr. Drader rounds out the team by providing in depth experience on commercialization of products destined for the medical diagnostic space, as well as a very strong technical background in workflow automation.

We specialise in the development and manufacture of columns for analytical applications in liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and high-end proteomics. Our highly reproducible methods provide a unique ability to enhance the sensitivity of mass spectrometry sample analysis, enabling scientists and clinicians to discover more from their samples.

Current demanding GC and GC/MS applications have an increased focus on sensitive analysis of more challenging active analytes.

Now we are pleased to offer a robust product capable of reducing the costs of firms and public institutions, make Chemistry easier, more comprehensible and facilitate the transition from the classical working methodologies to the current digital world. We are strongly committed to investigation, either academic or commercial. We are aimed to facilitate the researchers’ work with the use of Artificial Intelligence to tackle new projects, design novel methodologies and systematically organize the results. When it comes de science, we are the first defenders of original works to overcome the nowadays challenges. We struggle to provide outstanding products that can help our customers in achieving their most ambitious milestones. We believe that quality is a must in all projects and, therefore, we want to contribute to obtain the best solutions. We absolutely share the fascination for discovering new things: that’s why we are willing to help our customers in achieving them more easily and thus broaden our knowledge. The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a great example of the great cohabitation between humans and computers, and we truly wish to help in deploying it into the scientists’ workplace.

Our mission is to develop the next generation of utilitarian tools and techniques to mine more efficiently and deeply into the proteomes of cells, tissues and biofluids.

The purpose of the TopSpec project is to be the first in the world aiming to solve this challenge, opening up opportunities in medical research and drug development that are today only dreamt about. The TopSpec project will develop a ground-breaking TOP-down tandem mass SPECtrometry (MS/MS) platform. TopSpec will pioneer the deconvolution of massively overlapping isotopic clusters, solving one of the greatest challenges in top-down MS/MS of large molecules, the analysis of protein variants (proteoforms ). A major and growing challenge in the EU health system is the cost of drugs and targeted therapies. The biggest mystery is the human immune system; and, understanding this ultimately requires knowledge of the sequence repertoire of human antibodies and their respective antigens. One major innovation is the novel radical gas-phase ion-electron and ion-atom reactions. Another “killer innovation” is the method to greatly simplify MS/MS spectra of large molecules by adding another dimension of separation – collisional cross-sections of fragment ions, using two parallel innovative approaches. In this project, key experts in radical-assisted sequencing of proteins team up with the best developers in ultrahigh-resolution MS and MS/MS, as well as top European scientists in online protein separation and MS data processing.