The SEparation and Mass spectrometry (SEMpre) group develops mass spectrometry hyphenated separation methods to resolve complex mixtures and help address unresolved questions in application areas such as clinical, biotechnological product characterization, and environmental analysis.
Our research aims to develop methods for measuring the chemical and structural organization of both biological and synthetic polymers. We seek to understand how variations in these polymer distributions reflect an organism’s health or influence the performance of a product. Current methods often analyze polymer fragments, simplifying the process but sacrificing crucial information about the overall organization of these large molecules. Our approach focuses on developing methods to analyze intact polymers, preserving this vital structural context.
We are working on the study of proteins and proteoforms at the intact level (intact protein MS and/ or top-down MS) to help understand processes of disease development or diagnosis. In particular we are working at the application of low-flow methods, such as HILIC, native SEC and IEC-MS, to study glycoform and allotype distribution of intact proteoforms such as serum IgG .
Our aim is to enable the study of intact proteins by advanced LC-MS methods. We also plan to expand the area to other unexplored proteoform targets.
Read MoreOur research aims to overcome LC-MS analysis limiteation by developing methods for the chemically selective reduction of high molecular weight polymers. This will produce oligomers that retain key information from the original polymer, such as the sequence distribution of copolymers. Furthermore, to address the complex challenge of analyzing chemical distributions in synthetic polymers, we will explore advanced separation techniques, including one-dimensional and two-dimensional liquid chromatography (1D and 2DLC).
Methods to selectively fragment polymers will facilitate the characterization of properties such as end-group distributions and chemical compositions. Finally, robust data interpretation strategies, coupled with comparisons to established techniques like NMR, will be crucial for validating and interpreting the data obtained.
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CAST scientist Luca Tutiš together with Govert Somsen and Andrea Gargano as well as AstraZeneca, Novartis and GSK have just published a manuscript describing a novel LC-MS method for impurity profiling of therapeutic phosphorothioated oligonucleotides.
CAST scientists Annika van der Zon and Ziran Zhai have just published two manuscriptsshowcasing significant advances in the low flow analysis of intact antibodies and
Scientists from the CAST team and related projects within the Center of Analytical Science Amsterdam actively participated with lectures, posters and social contributions to the HPLC2025 conference in Brugge, Belgium.
Andrea Gargano is an assistant professor in Analytical Chemistry at the van’t Hoff Institute for Molecular Science, University of Amsterdam (NL). He received his Ph.D. in (Analytical) Chemistry from the University of Vienna (AU), did his post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Amsterdam (NL) and has been guest researcher in several research labs in the EU and USA (e.g. PNNL, Northwester University, LBNL).
In his research, he focuses on developing LC-MS technology to characterize synthetic polymers and proteins. This includes developing hyphenated separation approaches for intact proteins analysis by native&denaturing top-down mass spectrometry, the use of new enzymatic systems to characterize synthetic polymers by mass spectrometry and instrumental development of multidimensional separation coupled with mass spectrometry.
