Laura Smith, Cancer Biology Proteomics Group, Postgraduate Medical Institute in association with the Hull York Medical School, University of Hull, recounts a recent meeting at Imperial College London
Robin Wait (Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, London, UK) chaired this highly informative event held on 29 September 2006 at Imperial College London by life science communications company Euroscicon.
Professor David O'Connor started the proceedings (Centre for Proteomic Research, UK) and described some new methods that are being developed to capture more of the proteome.
Paru Oatey (Syngene, UK) took this further by discussing the advances in the capture and analysis of 2D gel images continued by Dan Gare (Li-Cor Biosciences , UK) who descibed the Li-Cor Odyssey imaging system for protein quantification and western blotting applications.
Robert Edwards (UK) discussed the use of surface-enhanced laser desorption/ ionisation time-of-flight mass spectrometry and fractionation in combination with LC-MS/MS for the analysis of oestrogen-mediated cell biology.
Balwir Matharoo-Ball (Nottingham Trent University, UK) described the use of a top-down bottom-up approach for the discovery of biomarkers for the diagnosis and prognosis of melanoma.
Christoph Eckerskorn (BD Diagnostics, Germany) introduced the BD Free Flow electrophoresis system and discussed some recent applications including subcellular fractionation of complex proteomes.
Jim Thorn (Beckman, UK) introduced the ProteomeLab PF2D system and presented data demonstrating the utility of this system for biomarker discovery.
The talk by Kevin Jones (GenoLogics, UK) discussed the advantages of using the ProteusLims comprehensive laboratory instrument and data management system for proteomics research.
Maria Krestyaninova (European Bioinformatic Institute, Cambridge, UK) continued the theme of bioinformatics and data handling by describing data management in the molecular phenotyping to accelerate genomic epidemiology programme.
Laurence Lamarcq (Clontech-TakaraBioEurope, France) focussed on the use of novel antibody microarray technology and introduced the Clontech antibody microarray 500 for the analysis of over 500 proteins in a single experiment.
Professor Tony Cass (Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Imperial College London, UK) discussed the role of nanotechnology in proteomics focussing on the use of nano-particles as labels.
In particular, the use of precious metal nano-particles was described, an example of which includes aptamer-conjugated gold metallic nano-particles.
Andy Pitt (University of Glasgow, UK) focussed on the rapid progress being made in proteomics technology and described recent advances in separation methods, imaging microarrays and bioMems systems.
The final talk of the day was given by Laurence Lamarcq (Clontech-TakaraBioEurope, France), which described the seamless In-Fusion PCR cloning system for optimised protein expression for high throughput applications.
In conclusion, this interesting meeting highlighted some of the latest technological advances enabling a larger portion of the expressed proteome to be captured.
