The Spielberg Family Center for Applied Proteomics
The Spielberg Family Center for Applied Proteomics (SFCAP) houses a state of the art facility dedicated to furthering the development and use of proteomic technologies to guide doctors in patient management decisions. Proteins are the workhorses of life - from turning food into energy to making bone, proteins perform almost all the functions for a living being. As many diseases can be tracked to one or more proteins not performing their function properly, a broad spectrum study of proteins can yield valuable insight as to the mechanism and possible treatment of those diseases. This systems biology study of proteins is referred to as proteomics. It is the goal of the center to use data from these studies to guide doctors in choosing the most effective treatment for a patient on an individual level.
Our proteomic profiling starts with a drop of blood being delivered to the center from a clinical office. The sample is stabilized and prepared for analysis on one of our inline liquid chromatography/Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometers (LC/FT-ICR-MS, "mass spec"). A mass spectrometer is a specialized device that measures the masses of analytes with very high accuracy and resolution; in our case, the mass spectrometer can tell us which proteins are present (because of their unique mass signatures) and the relative amounts of each of these proteins. By using the physical relationship between ions and high magnetic fields (in our case, 7 Tesla superconducting magnets) we can get extremely detailed measurements of the masses of those ions. Each sample takes 80 minutes to analyze, the result of which is a very high resolution profile of analytes that were present in the original drop of blood. Each profile is comprised of approximately 40 Gb of data - the equivalent of a single picture taken with a 40,000 megapixel camera!
In order to compare and analyze all of the profiles that we measure, the center uses its dedicated super computing facility. Our facility was ranked in June of 2006 as having the 412th most powerful supercomputer of those benchmarked by website top500.org , an international list of supercomputing facilities. One main goal is to compare individual profiles and identify aspects of those profiles that strongly relate to clinical observations. For examples, if 100 people are given a drug treatment and 10 of those people get better, we hope to be able to find elements in the profiles of those people that got better that would allow us to decide whether a new patient should be treated with this drug or some other drug. While we are pursing the ability to diagnose diseases in their earliest stages, our main focus is in changing how doctors treat disease.
For more information see : http://www.sfcap.cshs.org/
