Phenomenome Discoveries Inc. (PDI) announced that Dayan Goodenowe, President and CEO, Paul Wood, President and CEO of Phreedom Pharma, and Shawn Ritchie, Director of Discovery Research are scheduled to speak at the 2nd Annual Mass Spectrometry: Applications to the Clinical Laboratory 2010 (MSACL 2010) in San Diego, CA. PDI’s presentations are planned for Monday, February 8th and Wednesday February 10th, 2010 (PST).
From Bedside to Bench: How Clinical Mass Spectrometry is Turning Traditional Human Health Research Upside Down
Monday, February 8th, 8:55 AM - Plenary Session
Dayan Goodenowe (Ph.D.), President and CEO, Phenomenome Discoveries Inc.
Virtually all human diseases are diagnosed using human-centric methods from simple questionnaires to complex imaging devices. However, the current model of disease target discovery and validation involves creating an animal model of a human disease, discovering targets within that model, developing therapeutics that work within the model and then translating these therapeutics back into humans.
Unfortunately, the mechanism by which the disease is created in the animal model can be very different from that which creates the disease in humans. This results in therapeutics focused on symptomatic relief. Using a human serum-based discovery metabolomics approach we have successfully identified combination diagnostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets for Alzheimer’s disease, colon cancer, and autism. These clinically validated bedside targets have then been extensively investigated epidemiologically and at the bench as to their role in the etiology of each disease. This approach has led to first-in-class diagnostic and therapeutic products based upon true human causal mechanisms of these diseases.
Lipidomics: Pathway to Early Diagnosis and Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease
Monday, February 8th, 11:30 AM - Therapeutic Metabolomics
Paul Wood (Ph.D.), President and CEO, Phreedom Pharma
A non-targeted metabolomics analysis of Alzheimer’s and age-matched controls revealed a disease severity-dependent decrease in serum ethanolamine plasmalogens which also correlate with the declines in brain ethanolamine plasmalogens in Alzheimer’s disease that have been reported by several research groups. We found that the decreases in circulating plasmalogens were not affected by gender and were observed in both Caucasian and Japanese patient populations. Since phosphatidylethanolamine levels were unaffected we speculated that these biochemical changes may be reflective of altered peroxisomal function. This conclusion led to the development of a plasmalogen precursor (PPI-1011) which is being advanced for clinical trials in Alzheimer’s disease
Ten Years of Discovery Metabolomics: Concepts, Challenges and Opportunities
Wednesday Feb 10th, 2:00 PM - Track 2: Discovery Metabolomics
Shawn Ritchie (Ph.D.), Director of Discovery Research
The aim of discovery metabolomics is to characterize, a priori, the complete metabolic composition of a sample. Building a robust discovery metabolomic platform is not trivial, and to be successful, careful attention to multiple facets of the analysis is required including robust extraction protocols, reproducibility and quality assurance, meaningful statistics, molecular identification capabilities, translatability, as well as custom data alignment and processing algorithms. This presentation will briefly introduce common analytical platforms suitable for discovery metabolomic applications, emphasizing the efforts taken at PDI over the past ten years to build a successful discovery-to-validation MS-based analytical system. Specific discovery examples in Alzheimer’s disease and colorectal cancer will be given.