Waters unveiled the Xevo TQ Absolute XR tandem quadrupole mass spectrometer at the American Society for Mass Spectrometry meeting in Baltimore, held on June 1 to 5. The company bills the benchtop instrument as its most sensitive and robust system to date. Waters claims the new StepWave XR ion guide delivers as much as a six-fold boost in performance robustness over the earlier Xevo TQ Absolute platform.
Waters also says the XR model cuts power and nitrogen gas use by about 50% and frees a similar share of bench space versus rival triple quads.
Early adopter Synexa Life Sciences reports more than 20,000 plasma injections with high reproducibility and accuracy.
Waters notes that the unit is tailored for high-throughput use in pharma, contract testing organizations, and government laboratories.
According to a Waters application note, this enhanced robustness was demonstrated in a well-controlled experiment where the Xevo TQ Absolute XR maintained performance for up to six times longer than the previous model. In that test, it analyzed over 12,000 samples of pesticides in a fish feed matrix.
In a Waters promotional video, Sally Hannam, Scientific Director at Alderley Analytical (a Synexa Life Sciences company), shared that its lab has processed around 10,000 samples with the Xevo TQ Absolute XR, some of which were “quite dirty.” Hannam also reported success with an array of molecule types, including oligonucleotides.
Hannam, who was also quoted in the press release, noted that her lab has analyzed “well in excess of 20,000 injections of crashed human plasma” on the Xevo TQ Absolute XR. She added that “it demonstrates new levels of reproducibility and accuracy” for complex bioanalysis.
Waters is also positioning the XR for trace-level PFAS and drug-metabolite assays that struggle in negative-ion mode.
The Xevo TQ Absolute XR unit succeeds the Xevo TQ Absolute, which launched in 2022.
