Institute of Genetics and Cancer

Recent successes of the IGMM Mass Spectrometry Facility team

The IGMM Mass Spectrometry Facility located in the Cancer Research UK Edinburgh Centre provides mass spectrometry services: September 2017

The IGMM Mass Spectrometry Facility located in the Cancer Research UK Edinburgh Centre provides mass spectrometry services, including but not limited to expression proteomics, immunoprecipitation (IP)-mass spectrometry for protein-protein interactions, small-molecule assays, metabolomics/lipidomics and metabolic tracer analyses. Managed by a technical specialist (Dr Jimi Wills) with proteomic support (Dr Niall Quinn), the facility is under the direction of academic leads for proteomics (Dr Alex von Kriegsheim) and metabolomics/lipidomics (Dr Andy Finch). The facility has proved invaluable to many research projects and has contributed to numerous discoveries and publications. It is also developing and implementing new approaches in the mass-spectrometry field.

A hot-off-the-press example of their development work includes the recent publication of AssayR – a software package enabling easy and robust targeted metabolite and stable isotope analyses on wide-scan data sets from high resolution mass spectrometers. The work has been published in “Analytical Chemistry” – one of the leading journals of the American Chemical Society, and coincided with Andy Finch’s group being named as “Laboratory of the Quarter” by the Scottish Metabolomics Network.    

The increasing importance of the facility for the research community in Edinburgh (and beyond), and the quality of their services have also recently been recognised by the Wellcome Trust. This renowned biomedical research charity chose to fund the project led by Drs von Kriegsheim and Finch entitled “High-resolution and mass accuracy Mass Spectrometer with sequential fragmentation (MSn) capability” as part of their highly competitive “Multiuser equipment grants” scheme. The award will enable the facility to purchase a high-end Thermo Fisher Orbitrap Fusion Lumos mass spectrometer that will push the boundaries of science in Edinburgh, particularly in the areas of metabolomics, lipidomics and complex post-translational modifications of proteins. The instrument will be located in the Cancer Centre, but its capabilities will be available on a fee-for-service basis to the wider research community (for more details or to express your interest in using the service please contact the team directly: internal (UofE) - mass-spec@igmm.ed.ac.uk; external – through the IGMM contact page).  

Recent successes of the IGMM Mass Spectrometry Facility team
Members of the IGMM Mass Spectrometry Facility (from the left Andy Finch, Alex von Kriegsheim, Niall Quinn and Jimi Wills).

Related Links

IGMM Mass Spectrometry Facility:

http://www.ed.ac.uk/igmm/facilities/proteomics-metabolomics/mass-spectrometry

AssayR article in Analytical Chemistry: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.analchem.7b02401

Scottish Metabolomics Network newsletter: http://scottishmetabolomics.net/newsletter/

Wellcome Trust: https://wellcome.ac.uk/

General information about mass spectrometry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_spectrometry