January 20, 2005

Searle grant spurs proteomics research

$1.5M grant will help position Chicago as leader in emergent field

By Megan Fellman

The successful sequencing of the human genome has spawned an even more challenging area of large-scale scientific study: proteomics — the study of all proteins encoded by the approximately 20,000 to 25,000 genes found in humans.

Proteins are the workhorses of the human body, carrying out the processes essential to life. But they also are a major factor in disease, making proteins an important target of drug therapies.

To help position Chicago as a leader in the emerging field of proteomics, the Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust have awarded a $1.5 million grant to the Chicago Biomedi-cal Consortium (CBC) for the Proteomics/Bioinformatics Demonstration Project. Under the leadership of scientists at Northwestern, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), this first initiative of the consortium brings together experimentalists, instrumentalists and informaticians to apply new technology and new analytical techniques to addressing the basic questions of proteomics. As it fosters collaborative research and new partnerships, the CBC is expected to transform how research and training are carried out across the Chicago area. It is anticipated a successful demonstration project will lead to significantly greater grants.

“Proteomics is the new frontier for molecular biology and medicine,” said Richard I. Morimoto, John Evans Professor of Biology and Northwestern’s CBC liaison. “It is a shift to wellness. If we can understand proteins and their interactions, we can use proteins to tell us how a person’s health is at the molecular level — long before symptoms appear. By listening to these important messages we can take action before disease progresses and tailor drugs to meet individual needs.”

Healthy proteins form bone and muscle, fight infection and control metabolism. Unhealthy proteins cause trouble in the cell. Scientists today can investigate the nature and properties of a single protein in isolation, but the key to understanding human function, both normal and abnormal, lies in the complex interactions that occur among proteins in response to each other and to their environment. Since the human body is made up of tens of trillions of cells and each cell contains a trillion or more proteins, scientists seeking to understand this complexity face a research challenge of enormous magnitude.

Through the CBC’s research collaboration and its Proteomics/Bioinformatics Demonstration Project, Chicago-area scientists will have access to tools essential for meeting this challenge: a Fourier Transform Mass Spectrometer (FTMS), which is the world’s most powerful tool for studying the structures of proteins and other biomolecules, and the computing power and other means for analyzing the massive amounts of data the spectrometer will produce. Few facilities in the country have such specialized capabilities for proteomics research. The FTMS will take the three institutions’ existing facilities to state of the art.

“Science is becoming more collaborative — more and more of the extraordinary discoveries are now made by teams,” said Jonathan Silverstein, assistant professor of surgery at the University of Chicago, director of the University of Chicago Hospitals’ Center for Clinical Information and Chicago’s CBC liaison. “Our consortium taps this expertise of teams wherever the players are, and this enables us to do important interdisciplinary research that one university couldn’t accomplish alone. We need scientists to come to the city of Chicago for all it has to offer, not just for one institution.”