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Proteomics Center turbo-charges research at Childnre's

Hanno Steen, PhD

he hot, fast-growing science known as proteomics is officially arriving at Children's Hospital Boston. Space is being readied on the 11th floor of the Enders building for a $2.6 million Proteomics Center, which will be one of just a handful in the Boston area. And Hanno Steen, PhD, one of the country's leading young proteomics researchers, has been hired as director.

Proteomics is the large-scale, systematic study of proteins. Now that the human genome has been mapped, proteomics asks what proteins each gene codes for and what these proteins do. The hospital's state-of-the-art proteomics facility will enable Children's researchers to identify and quantify all the proteins in a cell, tissue or even a complete organism, and investigate their structures and functions—information that's expected to yield big dividends in medicine.

"Currently, we have to stand in line to get our material analyzed at other facilities," says Bruce Zetter, PhD, chief scientific officer."When we polled the faculty on what kind of new facility they'd want to see at Children's, proteomics was the runaway leader."

Expected to open in early 2005, the Proteomics Center will offer the latest equipment for protein separation and several state-of-the-art mass spectrometers, which detect and quantify proteins, then measure them to determine their structure and characteristics.

The Children's Hospital Informatics Program (CHIP) will lend its powerful computational tools to help reveal how proteins interact and collaborate to do the work of the body. But the center's major asset is Steen, who joined Children's on November 1, after completing a postdoctoral fellowship in the lab of Marc Kirschner, PhD, chair of the new Systems Biology Department at Harvard Medical School (HMS).

"By having a world-class scientist like Dr. Steen on board, our scientists will have access not only to the top equipment, but to one of the top minds in the field," says Zetter. "In addition to technical expertise in proteomics and mass spectrometry, Dr. Steen has superb training in cell and molecular biology, and he's trained in the very best labs in the world."

Steen, a native of Germany, received his PhD from the University of Southern Denmark, where he worked with Matthias Mann, PhD, a world leader in mass spectrometry-based proteomics. He did postdoctoral work with Steven Gygi, PhD, director of the Taplin Biological Mass Spectrometry Facility at HMS. In addition to running the Proteomics Center, Steen will maintain his own Children's research lab.
"Children's is a prestigious institution, and a very exciting environment," Steen says. "This is an exciting opportunity to do basic and pediatric disease-related research that will provide the best returns for society."

The center and its users will need Steen's expertise, because proteomics is a highly complex science. While it's similar to genomics, proteins have much more variable and complicated structures than genes. Moreover, the proteome—an organism's full complement of proteins—continually changes, whereas the genome is essentially hard-wired.

Space for the 750-square-foot facility is being provided by the Department of Urology. Equipment was chosen under the direction of Keith Solomon, PhD, of Orthopaedic Surgery, who is also the center's administrative director. Users will range from the Genomics Program, studying how genetic variations lead to disease, to clinical researchers, seeking proteins in blood and urine that can serve as diagnostic and prognostic "markers" of disease.

"With the center's expertise and technology, we'll be able to compete successfully for research grants that target high-throughput, multidisciplinary approaches," Solomon predicts.