Alliance unites Agilent's suite of solutions for proteomics, genomics and metabolomics with the scientific and diagnostic expertise of scientists at the USA'a premier respiratory hospital
Agilent Technologies and the National Jewish Medical and Research Center have announced a collaborative effort to provide applications-focused technical training in the fast-emerging field of systems biology.
Nichole Reisdorph, assistant professor of immunology and director of the National Jewish mass spectrometry facility, leads the training programmes, which include e-seminars over the web, hands-on application training and classroom instruction.
Reisdorph has trained more than 150 scientists and conducted nearly 20 workshops in the past three years, including a recent ten-day genomics and proteomics workshop funded by the US National Institutes of Health's Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
Reisdorph's expertise in 'omics' technologies contributes to National Jewish's integration of basic and clinical science to develop pioneering personalized medicine programs.
The courses, which are open to the public, include the new 'Hands-on metabolomics and proteomics workshop' (27-31 August 2007) as well as database-searching and clinical-proteomics programmes, among many others.
The centre's state-of-the-art teaching lab, which opened in late May, is equipped with an array of Agilent instruments and software, including: 6410 triple quadrupole liquid chromatography/mass spectrometer (LC/MS); 6510 quadrupole time-of-flight (Q-tof) LC/MS, with HPLC chip technology; 6210 Tof LC/MS with electrospray ionisation; 6340 ion trap LC/MS with HPLC chip technology; several Agilent 1200 series HPLCs, including the rapid resolution LC system; Agilent 2100 bioanalyser; Agilent DNA microarray scanner with analysis software; GeneSpring GX and GeneSpring MS software for statistical analysis of array and mass spectrometry data; SpectrumMill software for analysis of peptides and proteins; and proteomics LC columns, including macroporous reverse phase columns for separating intact proteins and Mars immunodepletion columns for isolation of plasma proteins.
"Agilent's integrated collection of mass spectrometers, DNA microarrays and informatics software allows us to teach coherent, comprehensive 'omics' techniques in our lab," explained Dr Reisdorph.
"This collaboration allows our students to focus on systems biology questions and on the amazing answers that are now available via modern tools and techniques, without having to combine disjointed platforms from many vendors".
"Scientists entering the systems biology field have few opportunities to receive focused, hands-on training," said Agilent's Nick Roelofs, vice president and general manager, life sciences solutions.
"We're proud to be a part of this important collaboration, which provides researchers across all disciplines with access to state-of-the-art instrumentation, cutting-edge workflows and tremendous instructional expertise from academic and clinical scientists."
