Research Snapshot: Calorimeters

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In addition to our analytical marketing skills, clients also value the ability to see and interpret for themselves the unfiltered comments discovered during research efforts with both existing and potential customers. In particular, product developers and engineering managers often find new insights – little nuggets of qualitative gold – in our reports.

​Here’s one example from the more than 250 projects we’ve done in technical B2B markets.
Scientists talk about their desired improvements for calorimeters. (Context: phone interviews in 2005)
1st Scientist: “What I would like is to have higher sensitivity. (Would like) ten times greater sensitivity. Now it’s like 100 nanojoules,(would want) something like 10 nanojoules to measure heat pulses with that amount of heat. The VP-DSC baseline repeatability is .2 microwatts, so I would like to see something like .02 microwatts and with the VP-ITC it’s something like 20 nanowatts, I’d like to see 2 nanowatts. We deal mostly with biological substance proteins and we have to deal with smaller and smaller amounts of protein. In particular we’re looking at proteins used in human systems and human systems proteins are expressed by insect tissue cells and the yields are very low, so that’s why we would need that. Ten years ago a lot of these proteins were expressed in bacteria, e-coli and you could get very high, large amounts. You could get 50 milligrams of a protein.” Now the sample size is about one milligram. “That’s a real problem and it’s more important to do what we call the eukaryote proteins, to understand the basis for cancer.”

2nd Scientist: “It’s always sensitivity. Anything more sensitive is good. We’re working a lot sometimes with proteins that have been extracted from pathology samples, so they’re extremely limited in quantity. So if we could actually analyze something down to the level of a tenth milligram, that would be good. Right now, half a milligram to a milligram is what’s required to get a decent scan. Anyone who can get down to a tenth of a milligram would get my attention.”

3rd Scientist: “Increased sensitivity. In general, increase the signal-to-noise ratio. You can never be too sensitive. And that could translate into better data, and/or reduced sample size -- both of which would be desirable. And being able to work at higher dilutions would be fantastic.” Also believes that calorimeters could be made easier to use. “There’s all these things you’ve gotta be real careful with. Like, ‘Did you get the stirrer in exactly right?’ You can screw up by getting the stirrer in the wrong place and having it whacking the cell. But if you could change the design so that it wasn’t possible for you to get the stirrer in the wrong place ... so if there’s these things that you just couldn’t mess them up, because they designed it in such a fashion that you couldn’t mess them up. That would definitely help.”

4th Scientist: Would like to see “an order of magnitude better sensitivity, which would lead to smaller sample volumes and lower concentrations.”