Katheryn Resing, who created the University of Colorado, Boulder's protein mass spectrometry facility and later became director of the school's central analytical facility, died on Jan. 8 after a year-long battle with metastatic breast cancer. She was 64.
Resing, who was an associate professor chemistry and biochemistry at CU Boulder, was considered one of the pioneers of proteomics. She received her BS in biology from Washburn University and then became a high school biology teacher. Eventually, she obtained her MS in botany, also from Washburn, and in 1984, after moving to Seattle with her then-husband and two sons, received her PhD in biochemistry from the University of Washington.
Resing did her post-doctoral work with protein chemist Kenneth Walsh and skin biologist Beverly Dale, studying the chemistry and enzymatic processing of the intermediate filament aggregating protein, profilaggrin. As a post-doc, she and Richard Johnson performed one of the first studies using mass spectrometry to map protein phosphorylation sites. Together, they mapped 400 sites on profilaggrin, which remained for years a record for the number of sites identified on a single protein by the technology.
With her students Resing developed new methods for MS/MS spectra analysis including a method to improve peptide identification by evaluating consensus between search programs, then integrating scores based on peptide chemical properties. She also developed a peptide-centric algorithm to resolve protein variants with identical properties.
Scott Gottlieb has joined CombiMatrix's board of directors, the company announced this week.
Gottlieb served as a US Food and Drug Administration Deputy Commissioner for Medical and Scientific Affairs from 2005 to 2007. From 2003 to 2004, he was senior advisor for Medical Technology to the FDA Commissioner and was the FDA's director of Medical Policy Development. In 2004 he worked on implementing the new Medicare drug benefit as a senior advisor to Mark McClellan, then Administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Gottlieb is currently a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an attending physician at Stamford Hospital in Connecticut.
Proxeon has appointed Russ Constantineau as its Eastern regional manager, Americas operation.
Constantineau will "enhance" the company's focus on customer support as it expands its presence in the US, Proxeon said in a statement. His experience includes employment at Eksigent Technologies and Gilson.