RE: [2] 3M Microporous Polyethylene Membranes for MALDI

Amina (amina@welchlink.welch.jhu.edu)
Thu, 14 May 1998 09:13:00 -0400

I concur with Rachel. Without John Crea's and 3M's giving us the polyethylene membranes that we requested from them, and that they provided us as a gift we would not have been able to solve some of the structural problems that we have been studying. Because we wanted to share this knowledge with the scientific community at large, we published three papers and a fourth has just been sent out, about how these membranes could be used. The last paper was published in Analytical chemistry on February the 14th. Since then I have been flooded with requests on how to obtain the membrane commercially. I also presented some of that data in a MALDI tutorial at the San Diego ABRF meeting in March and again several people wanted to acquire the membrane. So I called Mr. Crea and asked if he could try to make the membrane available commercially, and to contact the ABRF group because several of the members showed an interest. So it's very unfair to characterize his announcement as comm!
ercialism.

Amina

Amina S. Woods, Ph.D.
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
725 N Wolfe St., Baltimore, MD 21205
Tel: (410) 614-4981, Fax: (410) 955-3420
E-mail: amina@welchlink.welch.jhu.edu

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From: Rachel Loo [SMTP:ogorzloo@umich.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 1998 10:04 AM
To: Recipients of ABRF List
Subject: Re:[2] 3M Microporous Polyethylene Membranes for MALDI

Several of us have benefited from John Crea's and 3M's generosity
in providing research samples of several lots of polyethylene for our
evaluation in MALDI mass spectrometry applications. That access to
appropriate sizes of materials not commercially available has aided
us in our work: Int. J. Mass Spectrom. 169-170, pp. 273-290 (1997)
"Diffusive Transfer to Membranes as an Effective Interface between
Gel Electrophoresis and Mass Spectrometry". Since
Blackledge and Alexander's 1995 paper a number of us have
inquired about availability of these membranes but there has
always been the problem of commercial viability.
I suppose that in a strict sense, the recent announcement from
3M probably would appear to many to be "marketing", but I support
this announcement because I interpret it to be a sincere effort to
determine whether a single lot of an experimental material is worth
producing; if there is insufficient interest the material will not be
available.

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Rachel Ogorzalek Loo and Philip Andrews
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Mi 48109
(734) 647-0951
ogorzloo@umich.edu
andrewsp@umich.edu

Pardon me, but I thought this group was for the exchange of ideas and a
resource of information, not a marketing medium. I do not like it!