Live from the Lab at Sapient:
How timsTOF is helping to transform the speed and scale of small molecule biomarker discovery

October 13, 2022

On-demand lab tour: How timsTOF is revolutionizing small molecule biomarker discovery

Step into the lab at Sapient and discover how our ultra-high throughput rapid liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (rLC-MS) platform, powered by the Bruker timsTOF Pro 2, is changing the game in large-scale biomarker profiling.

With the ability to measure over 11,000 circulating small molecule biomarkers per biosample across thousands of samples at once, the Sapient team will guide you through a live demonstration of the system's nontargeted measurement capabilities.

Key learnings

  • Discover how the timsTOF Pro 2 provides sensitivity to capture broad chemistries, including thousands of uncharacterized novel factors
  • Learn about the comprehensive 4D chemical classification within a cycle time of less than 1 minute
  • See how the timsTOF Pro 2 fits within Sapient's larger integrated discovery pipeline
  • Understand how these technologies allow for rapid identification and cross-validation of new biomarkers across broad, diverse populations

Don't miss this chance to see how Sapient is transforming the speed and scale of small molecule biomarker discovery. Watch our on-demand lab tour now.

Speaker

Mohit Jain, M.D., Ph.D., Founder and CEO, Sapient, San Diego, CA, USA

Dr. Jain is a physician-scientist with nearly 20 years of expertise in physiology, biomedicine, engineering, computational biology, and mass spectrometry-based metabolomics. Prior to founding Sapient, he formed and was director of Jain Laboratory at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). There he led a multi-disciplinary research team to develop next-generation rapid liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (rLC-MS) systems to probe the non-genetic landscape of disease across population-scale human studies. His work was supported by the National Institutes of Health Outstanding New Environmental Scientist (ONES) Program grant and over $30M in federal, foundation, and industry funding.

Dr. Jain founded Sapient in 2021 as a spinout of Jain Laboratory to expand upon the mission of accelerating human discovery and drug development through the nexus of high throughput analytical mass spectrometry, computational biology, and population-scale biomarker profiling.

Dr. Jain has held faculty positions at UCSD since 2013, most recently as a Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology. He obtained his MD and Ph.D. from Boston University School of Medicine, and performed clinical residency and fellowship training in Internal Medicine, Cardiology, and Preventative Cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School.

Tao Long, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Head of Data Sciences, Sapient, San Diego, CA, USA

Dr. Long is a senior bioinformatician and computational biologist with over a decade of experience in the handling and analysis of multi-dimensional complex human datasets, including genomics, metagenomics, proteomics, and metabolomics. Prior to co-founding Sapient, she was Head of Bioinformatics at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), where she led a team of interdisciplinary scientists conducting research on metabolite and microbial biomarkers for cardiovascular, renal, liver, and neurodegenerative diseases, diabetes, cancer, and mitochondrial disorders. She was also previously an assistant professor at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute and a bioinformatics scientist at Human Longevity, Inc. where she led genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and rare variants discovery on blood metabolome. At Sapient, Dr. Long oversees data science, bioinformatics, and pharmacological modeling capabilities and is responsible for maintaining and expanding Sapient’s proprietary longitudinal human biology databases.

Dr. Long received her undergraduate degree in Physics from Peking University and her Ph.D. in Physics from Princeton University. She completed her postdoctoral research at Stanford University School of Medicine and is receiving her Executive MBA from UCSD.

Saumya Tiwari, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Head of Chemical Discovery, Sapient, San Diego, CA, USA

Dr. Tiwari is a computational chemist with extensive experience in analytical chemistry and the generation and handling of spectral data. Prior to joining Sapient, she completed her postdoctoral fellowship at Jain Laboratory at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), where she spearheaded efforts for the development of rapid liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (rLC-MS) software including machine learning-based algorithms for large-scale spectral extraction and data alignment. Dr. Tiwari completed her Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the laboratory of Dr. Rohit Bhargava, during which time she developed new techniques for use of state-of-the-art spectroscopic imaging to elucidate chemical mediators of human disease. At Sapient, Dr. Tiwari works in close collaboration with the R&D team to enable biomarker discovery via automation in data extraction, analysis, and compound identification using a host of artificial intelligence, computational, and statistical tools.

Dr. Tiwari received her undergraduate degree in Biotechnology from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, where she graduated with honors and President’s Medal. In addition to her Ph.D., she earned her MS in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Tiwari has also been the recipient of a number of prestigious awards including the Beckman Fellowship, Nadine Barrie Smith Fellowship, and the Society for Applied Spectroscopy Award for Outstanding Research in the Field of Spectroscopy.

Jeramie Watrous, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Head of Analytical R&D, Sapient, San Diego, CA, USA

Dr. Watrous is an analytical chemist and engineer with more than a decade of experience using mass spectrometry for small metabolite measures and associated informatics, both in academia and industry environments. Prior to co-founding Sapient, he was a postdoctoral researcher and subsequently an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Jain Laboratory at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). During this time, he was responsible for developing fully automated, high throughput mass spectrometry-based workflows for global small molecule analysis in biological fluids. Dr. Watrous was also previously a scientist at Watson Pharmaceuticals, where he developed cGMP analytical testing methods for emerging generic drugs. At Sapient, Dr. Watrous is responsible for the generation, optimization, and standardization of Sapient’s rLC-MS systems and other innovative instrumentation and lab automation infrastructure.

Dr. Watrous earned his undergraduate degree in Bioanalytical Chemistry from California State University-San Bernadino and received his MS and Ph.D. in Bioanalytical Chemistry from UCSD.