The Barnett Gazette

Electronic Edition, Autumn 2009

This email highlights breaking news and events between mailings; you may follow links below for full stories on the Barnett Institute website. We hope you can take pride in the Institute’s continued success in a changing climate, as we do of our alumni and colleagues. Please let us know in turn of your activities and interests - Stay in Touch with your mentor, or Roger Kautz.

In This Issue

Alumni News
Interviews with
  Claude Eon
  Emmanuel Carrilho
  Jeff Mazzeo
  Juan Carlos Diez-Masa

 

New Directions
  Regulatory Analysis of
     Biopharmaceuticals
  Short Courses in Regulatory Analysis
  Professional Science Masters

Faculty and Research Updates
  Karger, Vouros, Giese, Hancock,
  Jones, Engen, Zhou, Giessen

Events

Barnett Lectures:
Proteomic Methods
by Dick Smith

Saferstein Lectures:
Scientific Evidence
by Paul Giannelli


Alumni Interviews:

Claude Eon retired from 23 years with the French Ministry of Defense, and shared stories and insights as chief scientific advisor in disarmament negotiations.
Emanuel Carrilho, spent a 2-year sabbatical with George Whitesides.
Jeff Mazzeo is Director of Biopharmaceutical Development at Waters, ...
Juan Carlos Diez-Masa has been 25 years with the National Research Council of Spain, and recently compared notes on using CE to investigate glycoproteins as biomarkers.


Profs. Karger, Carrilho, and Whitesides

Visit the Alumni Pages for more news, and
a directory of all alumni.

Stay in Touch

New Directions in the Institute

Biopharmaceutical Analysis

Publication of many new methods of protein analysis (updates below), together with last year’s Biogenerics conference, has generated many collaborations on the analysis of protein pharmaceuticals and a memorandum of understanding with the FDA.

The first Short Courses in State-of-the-Art Protein Analysis and Regulatory Science were taught in September. Their success, in terms of high attendance, FDA participation and positive reviews, is a go-ahead to offer a Professional Science Masters in Regulatory Analysis. The PSM is a new class of terminal degree, which combines hands-on laboratory science with professional skills in communication, legal, business, and management; focussed on the goal of bringing a bachelors-educated scientist or recruit into a professional capacity in two years.

The rapidly increasing interest in protein analysis methods also supports the longer-range plan for a Center for Advanced Regulatory Analysis (CARA). CARA would be a center of excellence with facilities to develop and validate new analytical methods for QA and PAT; a GLP lab is planned. CARA would also meet demands for an academy capable of training GLP staff for industry, and regulatory scientists for the FDA.

Recent Events


The 2009 Barnett Lectures
"Advances in Proteomics for Biomarker Discovery and Validation"

Richard D. Smith, Battelle Fellow and Chief Scientist, Pacific Northwest National Labs.

The 2009 Saferstein Lectures
" Scientific Evidence
"
by Paul Gianelli, J.D.

"Don't believe anything you see on CSI ! "




It is examined whether expert witnesses in traditional fields of hair, handwriting, or fingerprint analysis practice objective scientific method, or adversarial pseudoscience.

Faculty and Research Updates

Barry Karger continues to lead significant advances in the analysis of complex proteins, with recent applications demonstrating more comprehensive characterization of complex proteins using a combination of ETD with CID and "middle down" proteomic analysis, as well as trace-level analysis using ultranarrow bore chromatography. Recent papers include profiling glycoforms with CE-MS and mapping S-S bonding.

William Hancock remains active in the study of glycoproteomics and glycans associated with infectious disease, and heads a major NIH program investigating glycans as cancer biomarkers. Recent papers include glycoproteome changes in breast cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. In biopharmaceutical analysis, he reports a proteomic analysis of high-producing CHO cultures, an analysis of innovator, counterfeit, and follow-on rhGH and methods for pharmokinetics of protein drugs.

Paul Vouros has deferred retirement with another round of grants: in metabolomics, DNA adducts, and toxicogenomics. Recent papers describe how cytosine methylation modulates benzopyrene adduction, LC-MS-NMR identification of active cyanobacterial metabolites , and profiling of the circulating endocannabinoid metabolome.



Roger Giese
is also active in the detection and identification of trace biomolecules such as genotoxins, DNA adducts, steroids, and bio-active peptides. He heads the Environmental Cancer Research Program. and has published recently on (PCI)-like behavior of estradiol in MALDI and purification of a phospholipase from Pallas viper venom


Graham Jones
group is dedicated to the application of synthetic organic chemistry to the development of diagnostic and therapeutic agents. His work includes targeted delivery and activation of cytotoxic antitumor agents and rapid synthetic methods to incoporate radiolabels for SPECT and PET imaging.

Sunny Zhou’s new methodologies to characterize protein post-translational modifications are finding valuable applications in autoimmunity and metabolic diseases. He recently reported a naturally-occuring agent that covalently inactivates LuxS.

John Engen characterizes protein conformation using hydrogen/deuterium exchange mass spectrometry. He recently received the prestigious Arthur F. Findeis Award for Achievements by a Young Analytical Scientist from the American Chemical Society, and had a feature article and cover story on HX-MS in Analytical Chemistry.

Bill Giessen is still active applying advanced chemometric methods to market analysis.

Andras Guttman has joined the Institute. Previously a Marie Curie Chair of the European Commission, Andraj has expertise in glycomics and glycoproteomics, using techniques of capillary electrophoresis, mass spectrometery, and microchips. He recently reported a monolithic support for a trypsin nanoreactor.

Roger Kautz uses microscale NMR with droplet microfluidics for LC-MS+NMR applications in natural product discovery and metabolomics. He recently published work on NMR detection of apoptosis in live cells, and received a grant to outfit the 700 MHz NMR with microcoil techonology.

Tomas Rejtar recently published exciting applications of CE-MS of glycoproteins, and the stability of the HIV TAT peptide.

 

 

 

 

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