Dec 17: Learning from untargeted metabolite profiling: a new tool in the armamentarium of biomedical researchers
Speaker：Steven S. Gross, Professor of Pharmacology, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Host: Prof. Mingyao Liu
When: 2013-12-17 13:30
Where: Conference Room 534, School of Life Sciences
Abstract: Steven S. Gross, Ph.D., is Professor of Pharmacology, Director of the Mass Spectrometry Core Facility. Dr. Gross' expertise is in pharmacology, and cell and structural biology, particularly in relation to the role of nitric oxide (NO) as a signaling molecule. In the late 1980's, Dr. Gross and colleagues made the initial identification of L-arginine as the precursor of NO in blood vessels. They were also first to establish that NOS inhibition elevates blood pressure in animals, demonstrating that NO plays a physiological role in controlling blood pressure and vascular tone. Since then, research efforts have predominantly focused on elucidating the enzymes and mechanisms that regulate NO synthesis in cells. Results of these basic studies have provided fundamental insights into the therapeutic control of NO synthesis, resulting in core technologies for the creation of ArgiNOx Inc., a biotech start-up that is developing novel NO-based drugs. Dr. Gross has authored or coauthored more than 90 research publications and 40 book chapters, review articles and books in the area of NO biology. He is an active member of NIH Study Sections and is a founder and Board Director of the Nitric Oxide Society, a group that organizes the major annual international meetings on the subject of NO and publishes a peer-reviewed scientific journal with novel reports on NO biology and chemistry. Dr. Gross received his Ph.D. in Biomedical Science from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.
报告内容简介：Dr. Gross’s major research interest over the past two decades has been elucidating mechanisms of cell signaling by reactive molecules, with a primary focus on the physiological chemistry and biology of nitric oxide (NO). Work on NO has culminated in over 170 published papers, 25 issued US patents, and the founding of a biotech start-up that conducted a multinational phase III clinical study to test the therapeutic efficacy of a NOS inhibitor for a life-saving cardiovascular indication. More recently, they established a powerful MS-based technology in collaboration with Agilent Technologies for untargeted profiling of structurally-diverse small molecules (50 – 1000 Da). This profiling platform benefits from multiple types of mass spectrometers and was several years in development - now enabling us unprecedented ability to identify statistically significant and important differences in metabolite expression in biological extracts as a consequence of gene mutations, drug treatments, disease processes etc. Most important for this CTOT project, they have established an innovative high-throughput robotic MS/MS platform for validation of potential kidney/liver transplant rejection biomarkers that emerge from plasma/urine metabolomic studies. Importantly, this new analytical platform affords rapid development of assays for quantification of biophysically-diverse molecular species, is orthologous in approach to the LC/MS-based biomarker discovery tools, and allows absolute quantification of up to 4 metabolites every 8-10 sec, for an unprecedented throughput of > 5,000 samples/day.