A new national initiative in ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) which aims to explore the use of IMS measurement within the pharmaceutical and biomedical fields has been launched in the UK. Professor Colin Creaser from Nottingham Trent University and Dr Paul Thomas from the University of Manchester are leading a consortium of experts and industrial partners, who will evaluate the potential of IMS in areas such as high-speed separations of complex mixtures and structural characterisation of pharmaceuticals and biomolecules.
This initiative will create a platform for a programme of internationally competitive research. As well as the two lead universities, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca and Waters have pledged their support. So far £530,000 has been committed to the initiative.
Colin Creaser commented that “We are at an important crossroad in the development of IMS from applications principally in the security field to a technique used widely in pharmaceutical discovery and biomedical diagnostics”.