Waters has announced that it has entered into an agreement with PREMIER Biosoft International to co-market software produced by the firm with their mass spectrometry solutions for glycan and glycopeptide analysis. According to the company, by augmenting their separations science products, mass spectrometers and UPLC chemistries with the data analysis software, biopharmaceutical manufacturers can obtain business-critical information critical for understanding biotherapeutic stability and safety.

Glycans are branching polymeric sugar molecules attached to biopharmaceuticals following protein translation and the determination of the sites of glycan attachment and the population of glycans present are required for both therapeutic and safety assessments.

According to the company, its UPLC glycan solution provides high-resolving, reproducible and rapid methods to separate and detect a wide range of glycans. Additionally, when coupled with its mass spectrometers the solution provides additional structural confirmation of the glycans. The software is reported to predict the glycan structure on a protein molecule, score it and generate a list of probable glycans that closely match the given MS profile.