The collaborative impulse
Jack and Shelley Blais are supporting proteomics research.
Proteomics technology at Dana-Farber is centered in two areas: the proteomics laboratory headed by Marto, where researchers are focusing on proteins that lock cancer cells in an immature state of development; and the Institute's Molecular Biology Core Facilities, directed by Paul Morrison, which performs mass spectrometry analyses for scientists. DFCI's initial investments in proteomics and computational biology were supported by the Institute's High-Tech Multidisciplinary Research Fund, created in 2000 to give researchers access to advanced technologies and encourage collaboration.
The Blais Center will, as it grows, place Dana-Farber in the first ranks of proteomics science facilities. It will include more than a half-dozen new, top-of-the-line "mass spec" machines to support researchers' projects, and will sponsor efforts in new experimental methods for protein analysis. Additionally, it will contain an advanced instrument-development lab, where investigators led by Marto will work closely with manufacturers on the next generation of mass spectrometry equipment. There will also be a facility for designing software capable of handling the deluge of data generated by proteomics experiments. Quackenbush and other computational biologists will lend their expertise to design algorithms for analyzing large data sets.
"Part of what attracted me to Dana-Farber is the richness of high-level talent here and in the rest of the Harvard biomedical community," Marto comments. "The promise of proteomics lies in the collaborations we're able to forge with other scientists."
One such collaboration is with Dana-Farber's Center for Cancer Systems Biology (CCSB). In some respects, this center takes proteomics to its logical conclusion. Rather than dissecting the range of proteins in cells, it is concerned with mapping the interactions between proteins. Since the inner life of cells is largely a matter of protein-protein reactions, studying these networks should reveal much about how cells function and occasionally malfunction.
"We know cancer rarely results from an abnormality in a single gene or protein," says CCSB Director Marc Vidal, PhD. "What's going to be important in the years ahead is how groups of genes – and the proteins made from them – interact in healthy and diseased cells. We'll be working closely with others in proteomics to understand how complex protein pathways are organized."
