Mobilion Systems Announces New Partnership with Oliver Schmitz of University of Duisburg-Essen

Mobilion Systems, an analytical instrument manufacturer, announced a new partnership with Oliver Schmitz of the University of Duisburg-Essen on December 18. The collaboration will allow Schmitz to leverage Mobilion’s proprietary structures for lossless ion manipulation (SLIM) technology Mobie to advance his research. Mobie is the company’s proprietary high-resolution mass spectrometry platform that can separate and identify challenging molecules.

“We have new printed circuit boards, to increase our mass range of analysis, the low m/z mass range that is required for lipidomics and metabolomics workflows,” said Melissa Sherman, CEO of Mobilion Systems. “He has the first instrument in Europe that has this new printed circuit board in it. We’re looking forward to what Oliver will discover.”

Oliver Schmitz is a full professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen, serving as the chair of the Institute of Applied Analytical Chemistry.

Since 2013, Schmitz has been a full professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen, serving as the chair of the Institute of Applied Analytical Chemistry. His research centers on separation science, focusing on analyzing complex samples such as Chinese herbal medicine, developing ion sources, optimizing multidimensional liquid chromatography (LC) and gas chromatography (GC), and advancing ion mobility-mass spectrometry and Origin-of-Life studies. In 2009, he co-founded iGenTraX UG, a company specializing in developing new ion sources for mass spectrometers. He has also worked as a consultant for international companies and has organized Sino-German workshops and analytica conferences in China and Vietnam. In 2018, he founded the Teaching and Research Center for Separation (TRC) at the University of Duisburg-Essen in collaboration with Agilent Technologies. Schmitz is also an LCGC International editorial advisory board (EAB) member.

“The integration of this cutting-edge instrument into our research is transformative. It offers unprecedented precision and throughput for analyzing complex samples and enhances our ability to explore previously inaccessible dimensions of research including single-cell metabolomics,” Schmitz said in a press release about the partnership.

This is one of several partnerships Mobilion announced over the last year, including collaborations with scientists at Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU). In May 2023, the company announced a partnership with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) aimed at developing analytical methods for the addition of high-resolution ion-mobility into existing per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) non-targeted analysis (NTA) high-resolution mass spectrometry.

In November, the company also launched a new proteomics advisory board, which along with other omics technologies, is an area of increased interest for the business, Sherman said. The board includes seven experts from industry and academic institutions including Bristol Meyers Squibb, Johns Hopkins, MIT and Harvard, and more.

“There's nothing better than having the thought leaders in these applications that represent hundreds of years of experience in these application and market segments,” Sherman said. “They're reviewing data with us, they’re validating our design. They're helping us optimize things and really provide real world samples to test on our prototype to demonstrate that improvement in performance compared to the incumbent instruments.”

Looking ahead to 2025, the company aims to advance its technology further and develop user-friendly solutions to simplify testing processes for analysts. Scientists, especially those in industry, are seeking tools that are easy to use and require minimal training, she explained.

“There’s always going to be researchers that want to probe and explore, but I think the reality is in mainstream applications and particular in industry, to be able to set up your samples and press the go button and get your answers at the end is really what’s required,” Sherman says.