NEWARK, Del.– QPS Holdings, LLC (QPS), a global contract research organization (CRO) that provides discovery, preclinical, bioanalysis, clinical trials, and clinical research services, is reinforcing its focus on qualitative and quantitative bioanalysis of biotherapeutics in Europe. QPS announces an expanded and upgraded fleet of mass spectrometers, with the addition of a new TripleTOF® 6600+ for GLP quantitation in Groningen, The Netherlands. As part of this expansion, QPS has hired Daniel Schulz-Jander, MSc, PhD, Senior Director of Bioanalysis, to lead the newly expanded biotherapeutics and biomarkers Liquid Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS) quantitation team in the QPS laboratory in The Netherlands.
This Sciex quadrupole time-of-flight high-resolution mass spectrometer is dedicated to GLP/GCP quantitation of oligonucleotide therapeutics and the planned expansion into oligonucleotide metabolite identification in Groningen, The Netherlands.
“QPS is committed to responding to the needs of our clients in Europe by adding an Ultra High-Performance Liquid Chromatography–High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry (UPLC-HRMS) system in the Netherlands to focus on oligonucleotides. This is a natural extension of 20+ years of supporting oligonucleotide drug development using LC-(HR)MS/MS in our Newark, Delaware, USA facility,” said Zamas Lam, PhD, Global Head of Bioanalytical (Mass Spec) & Preclinical Development, QPS LLC.
“This increase in capacity and capability comes at a pivotal moment for QPS, as we continue our two-decades-long global effort to support the pharma and biotech industries in developing cutting-edge new therapies to address critical needs in healthcare worldwide. This has become an even higher priority with the explosion of work being done in the nucleic acid therapeutics and protein drug development arena,” said Daniel Schulz-Jander, MSc, PhD, Senior Director of Bioanalysis, QPS Netherlands.
Daniel received his Dipl. Chem. from the University of Kassel in chemistry, his Doctor rerum naturalium from the Technische Universität München in environmental chemistry, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship in pesticide metabolism at UC Berkeley. Since then, Daniel’s scientific passion has been in bioanalysis. Starting in biotech at Ligand and Arena Pharmaceuticals, he moved to Medtronic where he built a bioanalytical team specializing in drug in tissue analyses. Since February 2022, Daniel has been the Senior Director of bioanalysis mass spectrometry at QPS Netherlands, where his team supports small and large molecule bioanalysis with LC-MS/MS as well as ICP/MS. With this expansion, this group now has all the necessary LC-MS and other chromatographic technology for PK/PD bioanalysis to support clients in drug discovery and development of gene therapies and protein drug development. This group’s expertise lies in the quantitation of oligonucleotides, peptides, intact proteins, and highly hydrophilic low-molecular-weight metabolite biomarkers by UPLC-HRMS, or by immunoaffinity UPLC-MS/MS (tandem mass spectrometry), or by hybridization-LC-fluorescence.
