NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The University of Kentucky plans to establish the UK Center for Regulatory and Environmental Analytical Metabolomics (UK-CREAM), and it has hired several metabolomics and cancer researchers from the University of Louisville to launch the program.
The UK Markey Cancer Center will partner with the four new researchers over the next few months to establish UK-CREAM, which will be located at UK's BioPharm Complex, according to the Markey center.
The investigators UK has recruited to establish the UK-CREAM also were the executive committee members at Louisville's CREAM.
According to the Markey center, these investigators will hold the same positions at its center that they held at the Louisville CREAM. They include: Teresa Fan, director; Andrew Lane, associate director of NMR Development; Richard Higashi, associate director of mass spectrometry development; and Hunter Moseley, associate director of informatics.
Fan, Lane, and Higashi have pioneered techniques for using NMR and mass spectrometry to study environmental stress-induced metabolic changes in a variety of indigenous and model organisms, according to the Markey center.
Together, these research partners will bring more than $17 million over five years in federal funding with them to support the center, the center added.
The researchers' current projects include a newly funded one from the National Cancer Institute using a systems biology approach to studying non-small cell lung cancer, and another effort to develop an integrated chemoselective and informatics platform for large-scale metabolomics.
Just more than a month ago, the Markey center announced it had become an NCI designated cancer center, the only one in Kentucky. The designation required that the center demonstrate certain capabilities and standards in lab and clinical research, and UK said at the time that it will enable the center to engage in more clinical trials offered only through NCI centers, and will provide more opportunities for federal funding.