Bruker Launches timsTOF Ultra Mass Spectrometer with Transformative Sensitivity, 300 Hz PASEF MS/MS, and VistaScan for Enhanced dia-PASEF 4D-Proteomics

At the 71^st ASMS meeting, Bruker Corporation (Nasdaq: BRKR) announced transformative sensitivity on the 4D-Proteomics timsTOF platform with the launch of the new timsTOF Ultra mass spectrometer. It incorporates a new Captive Spray Ionization (CSI) Ultra ion source with larger capillary and optimized vortex gas flow, a novel 4^th-generation TIMS (trapped ion mobility separation) XR cell and 14bit digitizer. The timsTOF Ultra can identify over 55K peptides that map into 5000 protein groups at the single-cell level of 0.125 ng protein loading, at 1% FDR, and over 4800 protein groups quantified at CVs of <20%. This breakthrough sensitivity and quantitation performance below the 1 ng protein load level sets a new benchmark. Unparalleled sensitivity, with the proven robustness of the timsTOF platform, and with PASEF duty cycle now up to 300 Hz for MS/MS, offers significant further performance improvements for ultra-low sample amounts, including unbiased single-cell proteomics and single-cell lipidomics, unbiased spatial proteomics, immunopeptidomics, phosphoproteomics, PTM analysis, and protein-protein interaction (PPI) studies.

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timsTOF Ultra mass spectrometer (Photo: Business Wire)

Dr. Fabian Coscia, Group Leader for Spatial Proteomics at the Max Delbruck Center, Berlin, Germany, said: “The single-cell sensitivity dia-PASEF workflow on the timsTOF Ultra has brought our low-input tissue proteomics research to a new level. Using a 20-min nanoflow LC gradient combined with Bruker’s optimized dia-PASEF (3x8 window) method, we can now reproducibly quantify 1,500 – 2,000 proteins from laser micro-dissected mouse liver FFPE tissue of only 1,500 µm², regions corresponding to approximately 1-2 hepatocytes.”

These timsTOF Ultra advances have been achieved without compromising the excellent robustness for high-throughput proteomics, e.g., at 50 samples per day (SPD), or even up to 398 SPD, nor the highest identification confidence of <1% peptide and <1% protein FDRs (false discovery rates), avoiding the cross-reactivity seen with targeted immune-recognition methods.

Professor Dr. Karl Mechtler, Proteomics Head at the Innovation Hub of the Research Institute for Molecular Pathology (IMP), Gregor Mendel Institute (GMI), and the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA), added: “To truly understand cellular mechanisms and diseases, it's crucial to differentiate between the various cell types. While single-cell analysis has been game-changing, we face obstacles in maximizing its potential for throughput and proteins groups that can be analyzed. It would make biological sense to detect 6000 or more proteins in a single-cell experiment. The timsTOF Ultra has overcome these barriers, allowing us to explore the proteome of individual cells at speed and unparalleled sensitivity. Thanks to the timsTOF Ultra, single-cell analysis has reached new heights, and I'm excited to see where this breakthrough will lead us next.”