Application of Combined 'omics Platforms to Accelerate Biomedical Discovery in Diabesity

Speakers

Organizers

Steven Gross, PhD

Weill Cornell Medical College

Steven S. Gross is Professor of Pharmacology, Director of the Mass Spectrometry Core Facility and Director of Advanced Training in Pharmacology at the Weill Cornell Medical College. The American Chemical Society recently awarded Dr. Gross with a 2011 award for "Achievements in Mass Spectrometry". His primary research interest is in cell–cell communication, with a focus on nitric oxide (NO) and reactive molecules as mediators of cell signaling. In the late 1980s, 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 been directed toward elucidating the enzymes and mechanisms that regulate NO synthesis in cells. His 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 seeks to develop novel NO-based drugs. Dr. Gross' research is supported in part by a MERIT Award from the NHLBI. He is a founder and Board Director of the Nitric Oxide Society and chairs the Steering Committee of the Biochemical Pharmacology Discussion Group (BPDG) at NYAS. Dr Gross received his PhD in Biomedical Science from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.

Irwin Kurland, MD, PhD

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Irwin Kurland, MD, PhD is an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine, and Director of the Stable Isotope and Metabolomics Core Facility at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr Kurland's laboratory has helped, for over a decade, establish stable isotope phenotyping methodology for assessing inter-organ fuel switching, and the characterization of 'silent' metabolic phenotypes. This is a key issue for translational medical research in the field of diabetes metabolism. As Type II diabetes evolves, with re-feeding there is impairment in metabolic flexibility, that is, in the ability for organs, such as skeletal muscle to 'switch off' using fatty acids and use predominately glucose instead, or the liver to 'switch off' glucose production, or adipose tissue to 'switch off' lipolysis. Disturbances in metabolic flexibility underlie the hyperglycemic/hyperlipidomic phenotype seen in Diabesity. Dr Kurland's personal research program centers on a multi-omic approach for elucidation of mechanisms governing tissue specific metabolic flexibility. Stable isotope fluxomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, and proteomics/global acetylome profiling are utilized to determine molecular mechanisms linking feedback via key metabolites, to dysfunctional regulation of the metabolic network in states of insulin resistance, in order to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying the (dys)regulation of metabolic flexibility in the fasted to fed transition. Recent papers by the Kurland laboratory illustrate the regulatory role, in the fasted to fed transition, of lysine acetylation on enzymes in tissue specific metabolic networks (Yang et al., J. Proteome Res. 2011), and the linkage between disturbances in fasted/re-fed acetyl CoA levels and subsequent dysregulated global lysine acetylation, on the metabolic network response (Vaitheesvaran et al., PLOS One 2012). Dr Kurland received his MS in Electrical Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of New York, his MD from University of Southern California, and his PhD in Molecular Physiology and Biophysics from Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. After his internal medicine residency at the University of Cincinnati, he was an Endocrine Fellow at SUNY Stony Brook, and has been on the faculties of UCLA and SUNY Stony Brook before joining Einstein.

Jennifer Henry, PhD

The New York Academy of Sciences

Speakers

Domenico Accili, MD

Columbia University

Dr. Domenico Accili is the Russell Berrie Foundation Professor of Diabetes at Columbia University in New York CIty. He also serves as an Attending Physician at New York's Presbyterian Hospital. His work is concerned with the pathophysiology of insulin resistance and pancreatic beta cell dysfunction. His main scientific contribution lies in the elucidation of the metabolic role of transcription factors of the Foxo family, and in the identification of their properties to modulate aspects of cellular differentiation that impinge on metabolic homeostasis, such as adipocyte and pancreatic endocrine cell differentiation.

Charles Burant, MD, PhD

University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor

Charles Burant, MD, PhD is a Professor of Internal Medicine, and the Robert C. and Veronica Atkins Professor of Metabolism at the University of Michigan Medical School as well as Professor of Environmental Health Sciences in the Michigan School of Public Health. Dr. Burant is Director of the Michigan Metabolomics and Obesity Center and the NIH-sponsored Michigan Metabolomics and Obesity Center which provides training and infrastructure for basic, clinical and translational research in metabolic diseases. Dr. Burant’s personal research program centers on the interaction between genetics and environmental factors in the development of insulin resistance, obesity and β-cell failure leading to the development of diabetes. His laboratory is taking advantage of recent technological advances, including metabolomic profiling, which have made biological, chemical, behavioral and imaging tools readily available to study an individual’s response to environmental factors, such as nutrition. In collaboration with clinicians and support staff in the Investigational Weight Management Clinic, efforts are under way to understanding the metabolic adaptations to weight loss and why despite profound improvements in health, weigh loss almost invariably results in weight regain. By collecting a broad range of phenotypic data, including clinical, psychological and metabolic data from people in the clinical setting and using computational tools to integrate and analyze the data, a more complete picture of the phenotypic changes associated with obesity and weight loss can be obtained. One of the efforts associated with the program is to make analytical tools available to researchers to more easily handle and analyze data generated by high throughput technologies.

Barbara B. Kahn, MD

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center & Harvard Medical School

Barbara Kahn, MD is the George Minot Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Vice-Chair for Research Strategy in the Department of Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She has made major contributions to understanding the molecular pathogenesis of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Her studies continue to elucidate the role of the adipocyte in insulin resistance and the regulation of energy balance. Dr. Kahn received her MD from Stanford University and an MS from the University of California, Berkeley. After internal medicine residency, she was an Endocrine Fellow at NIH. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Christopher B. Newgard, PhD

Duke University Medical Center

Christopher B. Newgard, PhD is the Director of the Sarah W. Stedman Nutrition and Metabolism Center and the W. David and Sarah W. Stedman Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at the Duke University Medical Center. Prior to coming to Duke in 2002, Dr. Newgard was the Gifford O. Touchstone Jr. and Randolph G. Touchstone Distinguished Professor, Department of Biochemistry, and Co-Director of the Touchstone Center for Diabetes Research, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas. Dr. Newgard’s research focuses on application of an interdisciplinary approach for understanding of diabetes and obesity mechanisms involving gene discovery, metabolic engineering, and comprehensive tools of metabolic analysis (“metabolomics”) such as mass spectrometry-based metabolic profiling and NMR-based metabolic flux analysis. Dr. Newgard has authored over 230 peer-reviewed and review articles, and has been the recipient of several awards, including the Kayla Grodsky Award for Outstanding Basic Science Research from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (1999), the Outstanding Scientific Achievement (Lilly) Award from the American Diabetes Association (2001), a Merit Award from the NIH (2001), the Solomon Berson Prize of the American Physiological Society (2003), and a Freedom to Discover Award in Metabolic Research from Bristol-Meyers Squibb (2006). See www.stedman.mc.duke.edu for more information.

Gabriele V. Ronnett, MD, PhD

The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Dr. Ronnett is a Professor in the Departments of Neuroscience and Neurology. She received her BA, MD, and PhD degrees from Johns Hopkins. Dr. Ronnett has contributed in two principal areas—the use of the olfactory system as a model of neuronal development and of developmental diseases, and the role of brain signaling pathways in regulating energy balance and food intake. Her contributions in the field of neurology include understanding the molecular basis of Rett Syndrome, a form of autism, and using the olfactory system as a developmental model to understand the factors involved in maintaining health of nerve cells. Her contribution in the field of feeding is the discovery of novel brain pathways that control food intake and the development of compounds that may eventually be used to control appetite and weight gain. Her studies of neuronal energy metabolism have revealed master energy sensing pathways in the brain that may serve as targets for neuroprotection strategies. Dr. Ronnett has authored over 125 papers. She has received various postdoctoral awards and a McKnight Scholars Award and is currently the recipient of several federal grants from the NIH, specifically from the NINDS, NIDCD, NIDDK, and NICHD.

Panelists

Steven M. Fischer, PhD

Agilent Technologies

Steven Fischer received his bachelors in chemistry (1981) and masters in chemistry (1991) at California State University, Hayward. In 1986, he joined Agilent Technologies in Santa Clara (previously part of Hewlett-Packard Company) where he has designed and applied HPLC/MS instrumentation for analytical problems for 20 years. He has over 40 United States issued patents in the field of mass spectrometry. He was the 2007 Bill Hewlett Award recipient for outstanding instrument design innovation. He currently is the Marketing Manager, Metabolomics and Proteomics responsible for Agilent’s world wide metabolomics and proteomics program. In that position he has focused his attention on developing solutions to metabolomics and proteomics analysis with the goal of using the experimental data synergistically to yield deeper biological insight.

Suma Ramagiri, PhD

AB SCIEX

Dr. Suma Ramagiri is a strategic application scientist at the AB SCIEX product development and application lab based in Concord, Canada. She obtained her BSc in Biochemistry, MSc in Organic Chemistry in India. She did her PhD in Analytical Chemistry and after that post-doctoral study at University of Tennessee Health Sciences, TN, USA. In her current role at AB SCIEX, she drives worldwide efforts for to enhance lipidomics and metabolomics applications, in part using an unique lipid database (part of LipidView software on the Triple TOF and QTRAP MS) to help discover lipid specific biomarkers in diabetes and obesity research. LipidView software contains a dedicated in silico lipid database, with 53 lipid classes, able to uniquely identify approx. 27,000 lipid species using characteristic lipid fragment lists, that may prove to be of particular interest to Diabesity researchers.

John A. Ryals, PhD

Metabolon, Inc.

Following his postdoctoral work at the Institute of Molecular Biology, University of Zurich in 1984, Dr. Ryals worked in various research and management positions including Head, Agricultural Biotechnology Research, Vice-President of Biotechnology, Vice-President, Research for Novartis Crop Protection, Inc. and Head of the Biotechnology and Genomics Center of Novartis, Inc. In 1997, Dr. Ryals co-founded Paradigm Genetics, Inc., an early systems biology company, and served as the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Science Officer and President and taking the company public in 2000. After leaving Paradigm Genetics in 2002, Dr. Ryals co-founded Metabolon, Inc. and has served as Chief Executive Officer and President for the past ten years. Dr. Ryals research interest has been in the development of metabolomics to aid in the development of pharmaceutical drug discovery, diagnostics and nutrition.

Mark Sanders, PhD

Thermo Fisher Scientific

Joe Shambaugh, MS

Genedata Expressionist

Joe Shambaugh received his bachelors in chemistry (1987) at Ohio University and masters in information systems management (2006) at Case Western Reserve University. He has 24 years experience in biological research and data analysis, including 12 years implementing enterprise information systems for life science research organizations. At Genedata, he has focused on integrated computation platforms to enable analysis of combined 'omics data to address complex biological questions. This includes processing and analysis of data from disparate sources such as Mass Spec based proteomics and metabolomics, microarray based transcriptomics, next-gen sequencing and other high-content technologies.

John Shockcor, PhD

Waters Corporation

Dr. Shockcor is a the Director of Strategic Operations at Waters Corporation, a Visiting Fellow in the department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge and a Visiting Professor in the department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial College. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry with over 35 years of experience in analytical chemistry using NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. He has been involved in metabolic profiling studies for the past 25 years and has extensive experience in drug metabolism and metabolomics and lipidomics.

Additional biographies coming soon.