Calibration Software Enables Single Quadrupole Instruments to Easily Identify Unknowns

Cerno Bioscience and Agilent Technologies announce they will jointly market Cerno’s MassWorks calibration software to Agilent GC/MSD ChemStation users. This novel calibration increases the mass accuracy of Agilent’s single quadrupole GC/MSD sufficiently to identify unknown compounds. This normally requires use of much more expensive, larger instruments such as Quadrupole Time-of-Flight, or Fourier Transform Ion
Resonance mass spectrometers.

MassWorks for GC/MSD uses Cerno’s patented technology to calibrate raw MS data from Agilent’s GC/MSD using peak shape, followed by CLIP formula ID based on spectral accuracy. This technique dramatically improves mass accuracy and enables single-quad instruments to identify unknown compounds. In addition to enabling compound identification without a library, the formula ID function also speeds and adds confidence to library searches. The combined capabilities of the Agilent GC/MSD Chemstation and Cerno’s MassWorks means there is now an economic alternative to high-resolution GC/MS systems for formula ID.

“The combination of Agilent’s GC/MS with Cerno’s MassWorks holds real value for end users,” said Chris Toney, Agilent vice president and general manager, Mass Spec Systems. “Customers can use their workhorse single-quad instruments to identify unknowns rather than rely on more specialised instruments with associated costs and delays.”