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| Vol. 5, No. 2, Fall 2007 | ||||||||||
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The accompanying photo captures a gorilla using a stick to measure the depth of a pond that it is wading into; the depth of the water is of critical interest as the gorilla does not want to drown. Depth, distance, or length: aren't these the same questions many of us ask in our use of analytical instruments? From the person working in a semiconductor fab who uses XRF to measure thin-film depth, the structural biologist who uses X-ray analysis to measure the geometry of the active site in an important enzyme, or the gorilla crossing the pond—fast, accurate knowledge of critical parameters can mean the difference between success and failure. At Rigaku we are dedicated to helping you predict your success by giving you the tools you need to cross your own river. Paul N. Swepston | ||||||||||
Rigaku will be attending the following conferences in
the coming months:
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 Rigaku
Americas Corporation is pleased to announce that the NANOHUNTER
benchtop total reflection X-ray fluorescence (TXRF) spectrometer has won
the 2007 R&D 100 Award. Presented annually for 44 years by R&D
Magazine, the R&D 100 Award is a mark of excellence known to industry,
government, and academia as proof that the winner is one of the most
innovative products of the year.
The NANOHUNTER was specifically designed to offer comprehensive trace element and materials characterization analysis capabilities to a broader range of research disciplines, and in more diverse analytical settings, than was possible with previous technology. Whether for geologists, chemists, biochemists, biologists, materials scientists and engineers, non-destructive trace element analysis is attainable, with minimal to no sample preparation, for applications that span from metallo-protein research to environmental assessment and semiconductor wafer metrology.
With sensitivity on par with inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), NANOHUNTER provides part-per-billion (PPB) level detection limits for liquid samples in a fully automated tool. Halogens can be analyzed with high reproducibility. Organic liquids may also be measured without sample preparation and sample volumes as small as 50 microliters may be analyzed. Direct measurement of solids and powders provides freedom from complex sample digestion or preparation and makes this spectrometer suitable for replacing or supplementing traditional atomic spectroscopy methods. Compared to other trace level atomic spectroscopy techniques, the revolutionary aspect of NANOHUNTER is in the minimal level of sample preparation required. It liberates the operator from ancillary equipment—like fume hoods and microwave digesters—associated with trace element analysis in a wet laboratory environment. |
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FBLD 2008 Conference: Perspectives on drug discovery and X-ray crystallography's increasing role | ||||||||||
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In Rigaku Europe's continuing effort to sustain high-quality customer service through personal accountability and professional commitment to you and your research, we are pleased to announce a new, dedicated phone number and e-mail address for our customers in Europe. Phone: +[44] 1732 765 008 Targeted at resolving your service issues promptly and accurately, our dedicated Service Helpdesk will put you in contact with the correct Rigaku professionals when you need them. |
 ActiveSight® and Rigaku are organizing a
Fragment-based Lead Discovery (FBLD) Conference February 2008 in San
Diego. FBLD is a technique that utilizes smaller compounds and
libraries to screen drug lead chemical space more thoroughly,
leading to more tightly binding compounds than traditional
high-throughput screening. Fragment libraries can be screened using
biochemical assays, surface plasmon resonance, NMR, or X-ray
crystallography. Advances in high-throughput crystallization, data
collection, and structure determination have made crystallographic
screening much more achievable. X-ray crystallographers can now have
an even greater impact on drug discovery programs by creating lead
compounds using FBLD.
The conference's agenda has been put together by a scientific advisory board comprised of FBLD pioneers from ActiveSight, Astex Therapeutics, Novartis, Sunesis, and Vernalis. The opening plenary speaker will be Stephen Fesik from Abbott Labs, creator of the "SAR by NMR" method. The closing plenary speaker will be Christopher Lipinski, formerly of Pfizer, who determined the "Rule of 5" which is used universally as a guide for druglike compounds. Along with speakers from Plexikkon, SGX Pharmaceuticals, UCSF, and University of Washington, among others, the conference will provide a forum to discuss the status and future of lead discovery and optimization, and FBLD's role. ActiveSight and Rigaku have been instrumental in the emergence of FBLD as a Lead Discovery ActiveSight's Vicki Nienaber did groundbreaking work at Abbott to establish that crystallography could be automated for fragment screening, and was co-inventor of Rigaku's ACTOR™ crystal-mounting system robot. Rigaku's ACTOR and powerful in-house generators facilitate the rapid data collection needed for screening the large number of crystals needed. ActiveSight uses the Ultimate HomeLab™ to screen their Fragment library in-house. The data are then processed by MIFit+ Rigaku's automated structural determination software that was based on ActiveSight President Duncan McRee's popular Xfit software. ActiveSight collaborates with its pharmaceutical and biotech partners to screen their drug targets, and they also have internal drug discovery programs. Rigaku's innovation in high-throughput crystallization and crystallography has also enabled FBLD at Astex Therapeutics, who have put several lead compounds into clinical trials. FBLD 2008 will take place at
Paradise Point Resort & Spa, a 44 acre private island in San
Diego. Emphasis will be placed on creating an atmosphere that is
conducive to scientists interacting. Exhibitors will also provide
information on complementary technologies such as surface plasmon
resonance, calorimetry, and NMR. An FBLD methods and implementation
workshop is also planned. For more information, e-mail ActiveSight. | |||||||||
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There's still time to register for
the SouthWest
Macromolecular Symposium, which is being held at the
Shenandoah Conference & Visitors Center near The Woodlands,
TX from October 24-26, 2007.
The keynote speaker is Dr. Stephen K. Burley, SGX Pharmaceuticals | ||||||||||
Rigaku is pleased to announce the
following training sessions:
All classes are held at Rigaku's applications laboratory in The Woodlands, TX.
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Rigaku Americas Corporation introduced two new high-performance
CCD-based X-ray area detectors at the 24th European
Crystallographic Meeting (ECM24) in August. Optimized for macromolecular and
small molecule X-ray crystallography respectively, the Saturn 944+ and
Saturn 724+ were internally designed, developed and manufactured by Rigaku
as part of an on-going commitment to providing the most advanced tools for structural biology and chemistry research and development.
The full-frame CCD sensor uses proprietary 2-phase architecture with large
pixels for wide dynamic range. To increase the sensitivity of the chip, one of the two polysilicon gates used in conventional CCD sensors has been
replaced with the transparent conductor indium-tin-oxide (ITO). This architecture eliminates the need to resort to backside illumination and
provides the intrinsically superior dark current characteristics needed to generate the highest quality data. |
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Limestone quarry lab technicians are required to take samplings frequently and respond quickly to certify product ready to release by truck or trainload. The demand for limestone is increasing due to legislation requiring sulfur dioxide flue gas scrubbers to be installed in oil- and coal- burning power generating plants. Rigaku's low-powered Primini benchtop WDXRF spectrometer is ideal for limestone analysis using a pressed pellet technique. The analysis of light elements such as Na and Mg can be performed with better sensitivity and improved element resolution compared to similar EDXRF units and without the need of higher-powered WDXRF systems. A new application byte is available on our web site that describes applicable concentration ranges, sample preparations, calibration and analysis results. |
 The
protein crystal structure solution software, MIFit+, is now
available for download. MIFit+ contains a new and updated version of the
MIFit model fitting and molecular display program and MIExpert, a robust
expert system for running molecular replacement and refinement
applications.
MIExpert includes a pipeline automation system for analyzing the data obtained from high-throughput co-crystallography and fragment screening projects. MIFit+ is the software used by the crystallographers at ActiveSight for protein structure solution, crystallographic fragment screening and to create structure reports for project partners. This software runs on Windows® and LINUX® operating systems; it is free to academic users and a demo version is also available. |
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ActiveSight and CHDI leverage fragment-based lead discovery for Huntington Disease therapies |
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You may have noticed that we've added video content to our website. Some of it is to enhance product descriptions, as in the videos found on the ACTOR product page. However, we're also getting our customers to talk about our products. Check out what Robert Gonzales from Powerlab has to say about the MiniFlex™ II. Listen to Adam Matzger from the University of Michigan describe his experiences working with Rigaku. We hope that you find these videos informative and interesting. If you feel inspired to share your thoughts with us, either in print or by video, we'd love to hear from you. Do you want to brag about something you've accomplished using a Rigaku instrument or pay tribute to a Rigaku employee who helped you through a difficult situation. If so: please contact Bev Vincent. |
ActiveSight announced
recently that it will collaborate on a Fragment-based Lead Discovery (FBLD)
Project with CHDI, Inc. |
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| Rigaku congratulates... | ||||||||||
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Rigaku's application specialists are constantly using Rigaku instruments to test and demonstrate their use and capabilities.
The gallery lists available application bytes by title. We call them bytes because they are brief and to-the-point. They usually consist of a description of the importance of the study, a snapshot of the experimental details and the major results. Want to know the difference between chocolate and cocoa? We have a MiniFlex II app byte for that. Want to see how we can handle twinned samples? There's an R-AXIS SPIDER app byte for that. We currently have over
seventy bytes on the web site, with more being added each week. If you see
one you think a friend would be interested in,
click the |
Congratulations to Jianhua Li from Rigaku, who won the award for Best Poster at the Denver X-ray Conference for his presentation: "Reciprocal space mapping of epitaxial nanowires." Front, left to right: Kenichi Yaoita, George Stone, George Fischer, Sean Bird Back row: Joe Ferrara, Jianhua Li, Jeff Weller, Tom Concolino |
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Rigaku congratulates... |
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| Rigaku awarded several $500 conference travel bursaries to post-doctoral fellows who provided compelling explanations about how they intend to pursue careers in structural biology. The recipients of these bursaries were Dr. Ganapathy N. Sarma (UCSD); Eric Ortlund (University of North Carolina); Peter Horanyi (University of Virginia); Bernhard Loll (Max Planck Institute); Natalie Borg (Monash) and Charles Dann III (UT Southwestern). |
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| ACTOR User Meeting | ||||||||||
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What's new at www.Rigaku.com:
Take our survey to express your opinion about the Rigaku web site
|
 The
ACTOR User Meeting on September 6-7, 2007 was attended by users from 12 ACTOR
sites and members of the Rigaku ACTOR team, ActiveSight and OSS.
To date, there are 42 ACTOR installations worldwide, representing the highest number of sample mounting robots from all commercial, government and academic endeavors combined. The success of the ACTOR system results from the flexibility for integration, many software advancements, and a continued commitment for development. In keeping with this spirit, the goal of the meeting was to facilitate free discussion among ACTOR users and with the Rigaku ACTOR team to identify bottlenecks, common user problems, and directions for future development. The meeting included presentations from ACTOR users and open discussion sessions. The Rigaku ACTOR team also presented new hardware and future development projects. An immediate outcome from the meeting included the creation of a moderated e-mail list available to ACTOR users. Information will be sent out in the coming week describing how ACTOR users can gain access to meeting summaries, presentations, and the ACTOR user bulletin board. We thank those who were able to attend the meeting this year for fruitful discussions and hope to see all ACTOR users at future meetings. |
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| To subscribe to this newsletter or cancel your subscription, e-mail the webmaster. | Rigaku Americas Corporation: | Rigaku Europe: | ||||||||
| 9009 New Trails Drive The Woodlands, Texas 77381-5209 U.S.A. e-mail: info@Rigaku.com Tel: (281) 362-2300 FAX: (281) 364-3628 | Unit B6, Chaucer Business Park Watery Lane, Kemsing Sevenoaks, Kent TN15 6QY, England e-mail: info@Rigaku.com Tel: +[44] 1732 763 367 FAX: +[44] 1732 763 757 | |||||||||
The
analytical instrument business is really about providing people with
tools that help them achieve success in their work. Tool usage is
typically considered to be a sign of higher intelligence and, for
those of us involved with analytical instruments, there may be a
tendency to think of ourselves as pretty high up the intelligence
ladder. But there are many examples of tool usage by primates other
than humans and when you examine their use of tools you have to
wonder how far we have really come; the problems we are trying
to solve might be more complicated but the type of questions we are
trying to answer are very similar.
Providing
both trace-level elemental analysis and evaluation of the physical nature
of the sample, NANOHUNTER uses a patented switchable wavelength and
automated variable X-ray incidence angle excitation design. The instrument
can analyze the full range of elements, from aluminum (Al) to uranium (U),
in solids, liquids, and powders. It also provides chemical information as
a function of analysis depth for profiling surface characteristics of
materials. As an example, for researchers involved in nanotechnology, this
ability allows surface layers to be characterized as particles on a
substrate, a homogenous thin film, or as something in between.
We recently decided to make
the results of these experiments available on our web site. To that end,
we are developing application galleries for many of our products. The
galleries themselves (for example, 
button at the
bottom of the page to forward a link to it.
