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Watch Video 3: Where does proteomics fit in molecular
medicine?
Nov. 10, 2008 – Proteins are increasing being
identified as playing a key role in many of the most serious ailments
that strike senior citizens, like Alzheimer’s Disease and heart attacks.
Protein discoveries were prominent in reports this weekend at the
American Heart Association's annual Scientific Sessions. One of these
was made by Jennifer Van Eyk, Ph.D., director of the Johns Hopkins NHLBI
Proteomics Group and the Proteomics Center at Johns Hopkins Bayview
Medical Center, where the protein analysis took place.
In this study that found a new test to detect
impending heart attack, the protein analysis was conducted by mass
spectrometry machines that can measure the presence of proteins in
minute amounts. The machines, operated six days a week for six months,
consumed more than 3,700 hours of spectrometric analysis, at the
Proteomics Center.
Johns Hopkins won a seven-year, $18 million
contract in 2002 from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
to create one of ten centers nationwide dedicated to the study and
application of proteomics.
Proteomics is the analysis of proteins encoded
by genes, which will permit physicians to understand and intervene in
various forms of inflammation that underlie many diseases.
Largest protein analysis ever finds blood test that
detects impending attack in those with reduced blood flow
Nov. 10, 2008 - A far more accurate test to provide
an early warning of an impending heart attack in people with severely
reduced blood flow, or ischemia, was introduced this weekend by John
Hopkins biochemists. They identified a mixed bag of five key proteins
out of thousands secreted into blood draining from the heart's blood
vessels that may together or in certain quantities form the basis of the
test. Read more...
‘This is a major breakthrough in an area where the
advances have been minimal’
March 17, 2008 - Two major eye diseases and leading causes of blindness -
age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy - can be reversed or
even prevented by drugs that activate a protein found in blood vessel cells.
“The Johns Hopkins NHLBI Proteomics Center builds
on resources provided by Hopkins' Institute for Cell Engineering, a
shared instrumentation grant from the National Institutes of Health, and
will fund additional staff and faculty to support more than a dozen
technology and biology projects,” according to the news release
announcing the contract on October 9, 2002..
“The Center's work will focus on understanding the
functions of proteins in the development of cells, tissues and organisms
and in normal and disease processes,” the announcement said.
Dr. Van Eyk, a Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation
Scholar (1996-2001), Heart and Stroke Career Investigator (received
2001), and recognized leader in proteomics research, joined the Hopkins
faculty to lead the Center.
Dr. Van Eyk, who also received a Canadian
Institutes of Health Research Investigator Award, was a Fellow of the
American Heart Association, a member of the editorial board of
Circulation Research and guest editor for a series on Proteomics.
She had also joined the editorial board of
Proteomics as editor for Technical Briefs.
Her research combines physiology and proteomics to
provide an in-depth analysis of the molecular basis for a variety of
cardiac and skeletal muscle diseases ranging from myocardial stunning
and heart failure to respiratory muscle injury in obstructive lung
diseases and sepsis, and using this information to develop new serum
biomarkers and potential therapeutic targets.
"Proteomics is central to the next phase of
biological research, to putting meat on the bone of the Human Genome
Project," according to Gerald Hart, Ph.D., professor and director of
biological chemistry in the School of Medicine's Institute for Basic
Biomedical Sciences and co-principal investigator of the Center, when
the contract was announced in 2002.
"This Center will make Johns Hopkins a major player
in the field of proteomics," he predicted.
"The next era of biomedical advance is going to
come from collaborations between basic researchers and technology
experts," said Edward D. Miller, M.D., Dean of the School of Medicine
and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine, in the original news release in 2002.
"Hopkins has it all -- major technological
innovators and excellent clinical and basic researchers and
researchers-in-training. This Center takes advantage of all the Hopkins
community has to offer and is going to create important new jobs as
well."
The original six biological proteomics projects
were all tied to ischemia (loss of blood flow) and hypoxia (loss of
oxygen), and how cells and tissues, via proteins, adapt or succumb to
the stresses they present. The technology projects included developing
techniques to study modification of proteins by sugar and phosphate,
creating new mass spectrometry methods and instrumentation. A third
major focus of technology development was in informatics and modeling of
a cell's stockroom of proteins and changes in that "proteome."
The Courtney Amos Research Fund and the Daniel P.
Amos Family Proteomics Center were established to further the study of
proteomics at the Johns Hopkins Proteomics Center.
