Graham Jones appointed to N8
Graham Jones, Faculty Fellow of the Barnett Institute, and chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, has won a seat on a powerful "N8"consortium of universities in the United Kingdom, giving Northeastern University an inside track on international collaboration and research funding.  (more)

 
The Ninth Annual Symposium on Advances in Separation Science and Mass Spectrometry was held at Northeastern University on May 9.  Plenary lectures were presented by Julie Leary, of the University of California at Davis, on "Advancing the Frontiers of Structural Biology; Mass Spectrometry of Biological Binding Partners", and by Robert Kennedy, of  the University of Michigan, on "High-Throughput Separations".  The Symposium is organized by the Massachusetts Separations Society (MASSEP) and the Greater Boston Mass Spectrometry Discussion Group (GBMSDG), chaired by Barnett alumnae Steve Cohen and Phil Savickas, respectively. (More Information) (Gallery) 

Renovated James L. Waters Mass Spectrometry Facility Opens
On May 1, the Institute celebrated with a gala ribbon-cutting ceremony, attended by James L. Waters, Northeastern University President Joseph Aoun, representatives from Waters Corporation, and other distinguished guests from the community.   The renovated laboratory houses four new mass spectrometers and other instrumentation to support Prof. John R. Engen's research in determining protein conformation using hydrogen-exchange mass spectrometry.   President Aoun stressed the increasing importance of partnering between academic and industrial groups.  CEO Douglas Berthiaume spoke about the fruitful relationship between Waters Corporation and the Barnett Institute over the years and its hope for new products to emerge through this continuing collaboration.  (More Information)(NU Voice)
    
Northeastern President Joseph Aoun (left) and Waters CEO Douglas Berthiaume.
Barnett Director Barry Karger welcoming guests (right) .   (Photos by Craig Bailey)

Alexandre Monzo-Fuentes will be a visiting scientist for 3 months, working with Dr. Karger's group on advanced separation methods for systems biology. Alex is a permanent member of the Horváth Laboratory of Bioseparation Sciences in Innsbruck Austria. (Alex Monzo web page)

The Institute welcomes Dr. Christian Baumgartner as a visiting scientist for the next year. He brings expertise in clinical bioinformatics and data mining in biomedicine and systems biology. Dr. Baumgartner is from the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Health Science, Medical Informatics, and Technology in Hall, Austria. His group there is active in multivariate analysis of data from targeted metabolic profiling studies of prostate cancer, metabolic syndrome, and diabetes.  (see Baumgartner lab site)

Dr. Samir Hanash Presents 2007 Barnett Lectures 

Samir Hanash, Program Head for Molecular Diagnostics at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, WA, presented the 25'th Annual Barnett Lecture "Meeting the Challenge of Disease Proteomics".  Completion of the genome not only provided the sequence databases crucial for protein identification, but the public success of "the genome project" also demonstrated the value of organizing many independent laboratories to pool data and collaborate in a "big science" program. The Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) is facilitating the application of proteomics to disease investigations by addressing concerns such as standardizing data formats, reagents, operating procedures and other issues critical to information exchange, to facilitate data sharing and interaction among investigators. In his technical lecture on February 29, Dr. Hanash spoke in more detail about his own work towards finding biomarkers for cancer, using his method of intact protein analysis (IPAS) . One very exciting approach was the use of protein array technology to investigate autoantibodies as biomarkers for cancer. Preliminary results suggest that autoantibodies to characteristic cancer-expressed proteins can appear up to 1 year prior to the first clinical symptoms of lung cancer patients.

Steve Martin, Samir Hanash, Sunny Zhou, and Catherine Costello

Follow-on Biologics.  

We recently had a discussion with friends of the Institute on how the Institute could contribute to the emerging area of Biogenerics. Attendees included (right to left) Rob Garnick, Sr. V.P., Regulatory at Genentech, Barnett Alumnus, Advisory Board Member; Bruce Petersen, Sr. V.P., Labs/Phase 1 Services, PPDI, Barnett Alumnus; Barry L. Karger, Director, B.I.; Billy Wu, Research Assoc. Prof., B.I., Robert Baffi, Sr. V.P., Technical Operations, BioMarin, Gene Marino, V.P. Regulatory, Genentech.   (Absent from picture: Peter Barrett, Sr. Partner, Atlas Ventures, Barnett Alumnus, Vice Chairman of the Advisory Board; Doug DeVivo, General Partner, Alce Partners, L.P., Advisory Board Member; Bill Hancock, Faculty Fellow, BI.)

New Faculty Fellows: John R. Engen and Zhaohui "Sunny" Zhou
  John R. Engen arrived last September as Assoc. Prof  of Chemistry and Faculty Fellow of the Barnett Institute.  Dr. Engen brings several vigorous programs in using hydrogen-deuterium exchange, detected by mass spectrometry.  This technique is being applied to probe the conformation, dynamics and interactions of several disease-implicated proteins which are intractable by other biophysical methods.  (More info).    The hiring of Prof. Engen, together with Prof. Sunny Zhou, who recently arrived in January 2007, is major milestone for the Institute. 

   
     John R. Engen                               Sunny Zhou (left) at Barnett Retreat             

 Barnett Institute News Archive
(links to earlier announcements and articles.)

Recent Headlines
  Albert Heck and Michael Snyder Present Hoehn Lectures on Proteomics
  Barnett Institute Retreat;  Barnett Institute Awards Ceremony
  Catherine Fenselau Presents Saferstein Lectures
  Lee Hood Visits the Barnett Institute 
  William Hancock now President-elect of HUPO
  New Proteomic Tools for Biomarker Discovery  
  New Instrumentation for Metabolomic and Natural Product Analysis
  

Barnett Institute Publications Archive