New Objective Webinar Brings Voice to the Patient: Translating Pictures of Health to a Movie with the FlowChip

May 11, 2022 – Littleton, MA (USA) Mike Lee, CEO, together with Emily Ehrenfeld, Co-Founder and President, New Objective hosted an event launching the FlowChip, a dedicated solution for microflow LC-MS analysis as a standard platform for metabolomic analysis. The digital event featuring Rafael Melani of the Kelleher Research Group, Northwestern University and his ongoing work using FlowChip, as the standard solution for Top-Down Proteomic studies, brought together thought leaders across industry along with colleagues from New Objective inclusive of their global sales team.

Emily together with Mike launched the meeting by sharing a narrative that captures the continuous evolution of innovation at New Objective and summarized its progression in her elegant analogy “we went from a picture to a silent movie and now to talking movies to hear the voice of the patient”. FlowChip, a novel solution for low flow analysis brings to market a universal solution for quantitative analysis as New Objective has integrated its market leading technology into comprehensive solutions delivering standardized platforms and the ability to unify analyses across platforms and applications. The New Objective emitter, the iconic SilicaTip and the gold standard PicoFrit, synonymous with the field of proteomics has been enabling researchers to capture qualitative data – singular pictures of health – for fundamental and essential discoveries, since its inception in 1997, building on the seminal work completed by Gary and published in Science in 1995. With the integration of this technology for nanoflow analyses, the PicoChip, New Objective further fueled proteomic studies with ease-of-use and the ability to standardize for comparative, quantitative analyses. The FlowChip, a universal solution layers on the close-up view delivered by PicoChip, for longitudinal studies of metabolomics and when integrated with lipidomics and proteomics and edited, tells a story – a movie of health

Rafael shared personal experiences, migrating from the PicoFrit column to the FlowChip, a path that mirrored his growth and evolution as a researcher within the Kelleher Research Group at Northwestern University. As he evolved from analyzing singular samples to generate snapshots of data with a close-up view to patient driven studies, consisting of large sample cohorts requiring rigorous performance for ruggedness and reproducibility for comparative analyses measured over time, Rafael realized he needed a “better way” than packing columns himself. With the establishment of a study of organ rejection in liver transplant patients and the ongoing human proteoform project at Northwestern, FlowChip was adopted and integrated as a standard platform for top-down proteomic analysis. Reflecting, Rafael captured his realization by stating “I tried to resist for five years but finally realized how great the FlowChip is . . . and it is delivering excellent results”.

Working together with New Objective, Rafael is launching an evaluation of FlowChip for metabolomics in fungi, building on the work completed in 2021 integrating FlowChip as the standard LC-MS solution for Top-Down Proteomics in the Kelleher Research Group at Northwestern University. Brad Ackermann, Eli Lilly and Company, highlighted the need to “measure what you must and not what you can”. In bringing metabolomics and proteomics into the same field of view, Brad emphasized their complementary nature – related, but not linked. He went on to share how the metabolome communicates a unique data layer of cell function and state – health and happiness – telling analysts what is important and where to look. And the proteome, its complement – tells us the relevance. Together, metabolomics and proteomics, each a data map, give an enhanced picture of health when integrated as combined data layers.

Gary Valaskovic, Co-Founder and Research Fellow, New Objective, echoed Brad’s insights into the complementary nature of metabolomics and proteomics data and their unique roles as they each give a narrative of health and drew parallels to the analytical formats of the PicoChip and FlowChip. The FlowChip, enables everyday use with its ability to readily scale, HPLC to UPLC to FlowChip, as the ratio of linear velocity is preserved across the formats, a progression facilitating ready adoption and standardization across platforms. The requirements for performance – peak capacity, quality, ruggedness and reproducibility – have been engineered in for the best results, delivering a novel standard, launched for metabolomics and readily enabled for complementary analysis such as lipidomics to deliver a comprehensive view of health – integrated OMICS.