Techniques

Life could not exist if it only consisted of DNA, RNA and protein components. As far as we know, almost all the significant physiological processes/procedures are associated with the co-function of small molecules and macromolecules. On the other hand, a great variety of metabolites are produced by complex physiological activities. To date, more than 114,000 small-molecule compounds including metabolites and naturally occurring small molecules have been found in human bodies. This forms a rich pool for researchers to discover and develop small-molecule biomarkers for disease detection.

It is true that using biomarkers for cancer detection has had a long history. However, most of the tumor markers available on the current market are proteins and they are often complained about for their lack of adequate detection sensitivity and/or specificity. Understandably, poor detection sensitivity tends to generate false negative results (FN) while poor detection specificity can easily bring in false positive results (FP).

Encouraged by the latest advances in metabolomics study, Femtera Labs has set up an unambiguous goal to discover and develop the next generation of biomarkers for better detection (especially early detection) of certain severe diseases (such as cancer) by exploring the rich pool of small biomolecules in human body fluids.

Femtera Labs is proud of having been established as a first-class laboratory for small-molecule biomarker investigation and commercialization. The laboratory is equipped with a wide range of sophisticated instruments such as high resolution accurate mass (HRAM) spectrometers UHPLC-Q-TOF-MS/MS and GC-Q-TOF-MS/MS. With a detection limit at dozens of femto grams (1 femto gram is 1*E-15 gram) along with a mass error as small as 2~3 ppm (1 ppm is 1*E-6), the state-of-the-art HRAM MS systems are certainly powerful tools to Femtera researchers for fulfilling the highly challenging tasks.