| Biomarker Center Grand Opening |
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September 14 2006 |
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Thermo's Biomarker Research Initiative in Mass Spectrometry (BRIMS) Center Attracts Protein Biomarker Researchers to Boston |
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New Englanders traditionally celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by wearing green and drinking their favorite Irish brew. This year in Boston, March 17th marked another exciting event - the Grand Opening of Thermo Electron’s BRIMS (Biomarker Research Initiatives in Mass Spectrometry) Center in collaboration with the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), followed by a seminar and cocktail reception at the Hotel@MIT.
The BRIMS Center was established to develop, validate and share turn-key mass-spec-based workflows enabling high-throughput biomarker discovery research |
 | using a disease model that is arguably the most critical human health issue of our era – cardiovascular disease. By partnering with investigators at MGH, Thermo combines the capability of the world's most sensitive mass spectrometers with the world’s best clinical samples. This unique convergence of medicine and technology could eventually lead to significant medical research findings from a health and cost perspective - the early diagnosis and prevention of cardiovascular disease.
The BRIMS Center, led by Dr. Leo Bonilla from Thermo Electron and Dr. Robert Gerszten of MGH opened its doors to the public on St. Patrick's Day to introduce approximately 150 guests to the workflows in the lab they're using to rapidly and simultaneously screen thousands of proteins from human plasma in an unbiased “encyclopedic” search for novel and improved protein biomarkers of heart disease. The core of the research is centered on LC/MS/MS techniques, with the Finnigan ProteomeX LTQ proteomics workstation and Finnigan LTQ FT hybrid linear ion trap-FTICR sharing most of the spotlight for the day. Bonilla and Gerszten also acknowledge that sample preparation plays a critical role in limiting sample-to-sample variability before the samples are ever introduced to the mass spectrometer, and for this reason, the center is staffed not only with scientists and mass spectrometrists, but also with those who combine this with their knowledge of protein chemistry, as well as those with a background in informatics. Another goal of the BRIMS team is to design and develop software for the purpose of quantifying differentially expressed proteins – without the need for isotopic or chemical labels which can interfere with the analysis. The prototype of this expression software was previewed at the open house to excited customers who appeared eager to be the first to try it out when it becomes commercially available at the end of this year or early next year.
Following the open house, guests were shuttled over to the Hotel@MIT, where two invited speakers shared their biomarker research experiences at the seminar, Dr. Leigh Anderson, CEO of the Plasma Proteome Institute in Washington, DC, and Dr. Steven Carr, Director of Proteomics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. |
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