EBI's Rolf Apweiler Named HUPO President-Elect
Rolf Apweiler of the European Bioinformatics Institute has been elected to become the next president of the Human Proteome Organization.
Apweiler is currently chair of HUPO's Proteomics Standards Initiative, which aims to create bioinformatics standards for the submission and storage of data and information on proteomics experiments, as well as other types of experiments. He will take HUPO's helm on Jan. 1, 2007, for two years, replacing John Bergeron.
"HUPO is a very interesting organization," Apweiler told ProteoMonitor. "It's changed from a small, creative bunch of scientists into an adolescent group which is starting to have an impact. I hope to bring it from an adolescent to an adult stage."
Apweiler said he plans to visit the HUPO headquarters in Montreal in the near future to learn more about the organization as a whole.
In addition, Catherine Fenselau, the current US-HUPO president who is a professor at the University of Maryland, and Young-Ki Paik, the director of the Yonsei Proteome Research Center in Korea who is also the president of K-HUPO and the secretary general of HUPO, have been elected to become vice presidents of HUPO starting in January 2007.
Nonlinear Dynamics Forms Marketing Deals With Waters, Invitrogen
Nonlinear Dynamics and Waters will co-market and co-develop their respective 2D gel-analysis and protein mass spectrometry-analysis software products, the companies said this week.
Under the agreement, the two firms will co-market Nonlinear's Progenesis 2D gel electrophoresis analysis software and Waters' ProteinLynx Global Server 2.2.5 protein mass informatics system.
The partners also said they intend to jointly develop their products further, adding multivariate approaches to discovery research and orthogonal label-free protein quantification strategies.
In addition, Invitrogen will market and distribute a number of products from Nonlinear Dynamics' TotalLab and Progenesis lines, the companies said this week.
Terms of the deal call for the products, which include tools for 1D and 2D electrophoresis-gel analysis, to be marketed with Invitrogen's proteomics technologies, especially the firm's own 1D and 2D gel electrophoresis line.
The companies said they plan to "work together to integrate further" other product lines.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
Invitrogen and Scripps Research Institute to Co-Develop Methods for Studying Membrane Proteins
Invitrogen and the Scripps Research Institute are collaborating on new methods to study membrane proteins, the two partners said this week.
Under the direction of Geoffrey Chang, a group leader at Scripps, scientists at Scripps and Invitrogen's proteomics R&D group will try to develop better ways to express, isolate, and characterize membrane proteins.
Invitrogen will have the right to commercialize resulting technologies in the research and drug-screening markets.
Genome Canada Doles Out Another $150M for 33 Genomics and Proteomics Projects; Other Funds Bring Total to $290M
Genome Canada last week announced CA$346 million ($290 million) in funding for 33 new genomics and proteomics research projects.
Genome Canada provides CA$179.3 million of the total, with 80 percent of the remainder coming from other public funding sources in Canada. Other contributions are provided by private sources in Canada, as well as international public and private sector partners.
"Stretching government dollars through collaborations with other governments and partners maximizes our research capacity," David Emerson, Canada's minister of industry, who is responsible for Genome Canada, said in a statement.
The research topics span health, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, new technologies, and ethics. A complete list of the 33 projects can be found here.
Since 2000, Genome Canada has received CA$600 million in total from the government of Canada for research in genomics and proteomics.
Biosystems Informatics Institute Licenses Software from Pattern Expert for Proteomics Apps
Biosystems Informatics Institute and its commercial trading arm, Turbinia, have exclusively licensed software from Pattern Expert in order to develop and market it for protein biomarker discovery.
The software has so far been used in forensics to identify car models from paint residue left at accident sites. Biosystems and Turbinia, both based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, plan to develop the software "to improve the quality of mass spectrometry data used in proteomics and other life sciences disciplines" for biomarker applications, according to a statement. The firms will begin conducting beta testing at the end of September.
Biosystems Informatics Institute, founded a year ago and funded by the UK government, develops systems biology and bioinformatics software in collaboration with UK universities, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical companies. The institute has been working closely with Nonlinear Dynamics to develop proteomics software. Pattern Expert is located in of Borsdorf, Germany.