SGMS Meeting 2001

The Fourier Transform Mass Spectrometer (FTMS) - Is this powerful analytical tool ripe for chemists and biochemists in the pharmaceutical industry?

Christian Guenat
Novartis Pharma AG, Research Department, 4002 Basel

Although Fourier transform mass spectrometry (FTMS) has been introduced about thirty years ago, the chemical industry, and in particular the pharmaceutical industry, recognized its potential only in the past decade after new external ionization sources were adapted to those instruments. FTMS is certainly the most powerful tool in mass spectrometry, and with its unique features FTMS opens up a whole range of new of possibilities to the mass spectroscopist dealing with a variety of chemical and biochemical problems. It can solve several analytical problems not amenable to any other mass spectrometer, or it can perform many tasks better, faster or more efficiently than other instruments. The field of applications is very broad across the drug discovery process, including natural/synthetic product structural analysis, combinatorial library development/confirmation, non-covalent interactions, proteomics and genomics, and oligonucleotides.

With this in mind we have completed an evaluation based on potential applications encountered in the drug discovery process. This presentation will show several results obtained during this evaluation and give some insights about the FTMS technology.