Palo Alto, CA -- Varian, Inc. (NasdaqGS: VARI) announced today its new filtration plate for sample preparation. Captiva™ NDLipids is a simple to use, non-drip 96-well plate specially designed to remove phospholipids including lysophosphatidylcholines, from biofluids.

It is intended for use by analytical chemists in the pharmaceutical and life science industries performing quantitative and qualitative analyses of drugs in biofluids. In applications such as drug screening and monitoring in early discovery, pre-clinical and clinical trials, the lipids, proteins and surfactants in a biofluid sample must be removed before analysis by liquid chromatography/mass spectroscopy (LC/MS). Incomplete removal leads to ion suppression (reduced sensitivity) and, over time, degrades the performance of both the LC column, reducing column life, and the MS ion source, increasing maintenance. Using Captiva NDLipids, plasma extracts are virtually free from endogenous matrix interferences (over 97% of the phosphatidylcholines are removed).

Ion suppression is significantly reduced resulting in enhanced sensitivity and precision during trace analysis. The removal of lipid compounds results in better peak shapes and more reproducible retention times so that Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) parameters are easily validated. A fast, 3-step, inwell precipitation protocol is applicable to a wide variety of analytes. This ensures high sample throughputs and avoids the need for extensive methods development.

For more technical information about Varian products, please visit
http://www.varianinc.com/products/pr/captiva_lp.html