Biomarkers and Clinical Research

Dr. Búko has served as the Vice President of Human Metabolome Technologies-America (HMT-A) Biomarker discovery team since 2013, where he partners with biopharmaceutical companies to bring high resolution quantitative metabolomics profiling to pre-clinical and clinical studies. Prior to joining Human Metabolome Technologies, Dr. Búko was Senior Director Translational Medicine at Biogen for 10 years and Principal Investigator at Abbott labs for 18 years. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Virginia, with post-doctoral work for Bureau of Biologics and Biophysics at Food and Drug administration.

Dr. Búko’s career has focused primarily on omics solutions for biomarker and target discovery within the biopharma pipeline. Most of his work has been in immunology, infectious disease and neurology, however, at HMT-A he has widened his scope to many other therapeutic areas. While in biopharma Alex managed biomarker pipelines from pre-clinical to clinical studies using various protein and small molecule technologies to discovery and validate biomarkers for drug development and patient stratification. Dr. Búko’s areas of expertise include proteomics, lipidomics, metabolomics, protein assays and the statistical and biological pathway approaches required to combine omics data and generate prognostic and diagnostic algorithms.

Fred Baribaud holds a PhD from the University of Lausanne and has conducted postdoctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He has worked at Incyte Corporation in a discovery role on target validation and as a compound team co-lead for small molecular inhibitors. For the past ten years, Fred has worked at Janssen R&D in Immunology Biomarkers on various inflammatory diseases. In his current role as Scientific Director he is focused on obtaining disease rational for targets and patient segmentation for inflammatory bowel diseases.

For the past ten years, Fred has worked at Janssen R&D in Immunology Biomarkers on various inflammatory diseases. In his current role as Scientific Director he is focused on obtaining disease rational for targets and patient segmentation for inflammatory bowel diseases.

Dr. Martin Burow is founder and owner of the DMB-Diagnostics GmbH and specialist for medical sales and marketing activities in Asia and Europe. Martin Burow has completed his PhD in Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Münster in 1993 and worked 3 years as a Post-doctoral fellow for the Ministry of International Trade and Industry at the National Institute of Materials and Chemical Research (NIMC) in Tsukuba, Japan. After his return to Germany, he started his career in the medical device industry and developed the Asian-Pacific markets for Brahms-Thermofisher in the field of medical diagnostics (thyroid, sepsis, prenatal and oncology). Later, he started his own company (DMB-Diagnostics GmbH) to introduce highly innovative diagnostics worldwide for better treatment standards for oncological patients.

Biochemistry, Diagnostics, Regulatory

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Dr. Pant received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Physics from Agra University, Agra, India. His postdoctoral studies were conducted on the mechanisms of electron and ion transport in model membrane systems at the Department of Biophysics at Michigan State University. He joined the Laboratory of Neurobiology in the NIMH as a senior staff fellow in 1974 with Dr. Ichiji Tasaki where he studied the function of the axonal cytoskeleton in the squid giant axon. In 1979 he moved to the NIAAA extending his studies on the neuronal cytoskeleton and the effects of alcohol on its regulation. Dr. Pant moved to the NINDS, Laboratory of Neurochemistry in 1987 where he is presently chief of the section on Cytoskeleton Regulation. His laboratory is studying the mechanisms of topographic regulation of neuronal cytoskeleton proteins by post-translational modification, including the role of kinase cascades in normal brain and during neurodegeneration.

The major focus of this laboratory has been to study the mechanisms of topographic regulation of neuronal cytoskeletal proteins regulation by phosphorylation and neurodegeneration. In a normal physiological state, cytoskeletal proteins are phosphorylated extensively in the axonal compartment of a mature neuron. Although all the substrates, kinases, phosphatases and their regulators are synthesized in neuronal cell bodies, little or no cytoskeletal protein phosphorylation has been detected in the cell body compartment. Under a variety of neuropathological conditions, however, such as ALS, Alzheimers Disease, or Picks disease, hyperphosphorylation of these molecules has been found in abnormal aggregates within cell bodies, usually correlated with massive neuronal cell death. The mechanisms underlying these profound compartmental shifts in neuronal phosphorylation are not well understood.The normal physiological processes within neurons are controlled by signal transduction mechanisms that regulate the balance between protein kinase and protein phosphatase activities. We have shown that the most abundant and extensively phosphorylated motifs in the c-terminal domains (lys-ser-pro-, or KSP) are primarily phosphorylated by proline directed kinases, cdk5 and MAP kinases. Moreover, we have demonstrated that this phosphorylation is due to activation of the signal transduction cascade. Recently, we have focussed on the other part of this regulation, the protein phosphatases. The other project is to study the expression, regulation and role of neuronal Cdk5 in nerve cell function.Cdk5 is a unique multifunctional kinase. Unlike other cyclin-dependent kinases, it is expressed predominantly in post-mitotic neurons, its activity modulated by association with nervous system-specific propeins. Since its identification and characterization in our laboratory, we have been intensively studying its mechanisms of regulation and its role in nerve cell function.

Dr. Luo is a member of the Divisions of Experimental Pathology, Molecular and Cellular Pathology and Anatomic Molecular Pathology. He is the Director of the High Throughput Genome Center at the Department of Pathology, University of Pittsburgh, involving collaboration of faculties from multiple departments.

Currently, Dr. Luo's research interests involve identifying new tumor suppressor genes and tumor markers in several human malignancies such as prostate cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, etc. Subsequently, we will direct our effort to evaluate the prognostic values of these genes and markers in making early diagnosis of prostate cancer and serving as drug targets for cancer prevention programs.

Sergey Suchkov, MD, PhD was born in 11.01.1957, a researcher-immunologist, a clinician, graduated from Astrakhan State Medical University, Russia, in 1980.Suchkov has been trained at the Institute for Medical Enzymology, The USSR Academy of Medical Sciences,National Center for Immunology (Russia), NIH, Bethesda, USA) and British Society for Immunology to cover 4 British university facilities. Since 2005, Dr Suchkov has been working as Faculty Professor of I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University and Of A.I.Evdokimov Moscow State Medical & Dental University. From 2007, Suchkov is the First Vice-President and Dean of the School of PPPM Politics and Management of the University of World Politics and Law. In 1991-1995, Dr Suchkov was a Scientific Secretary-in-Chief of the Editorial Board of the International Journal“Biomedical Science” (Russian Academy of Sciences and Royal Society of Chemistry, UK) and The International Publishing Bureau at the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1995-2005, Suchkov was a Director of the Russian-American Program in Immunology of the Eye Diseases.Dr Suchkov is a member of EPMA (European Association of Predictive, Preventive and Personalized Medicine,Brussels-Bonn), a member of the NY Academy of Sciences, a member of the Editorial Boards for Open Journal of Immunology and others. Dr Suchkov is known as an author of the Concept of post-infectious clinical and immunological syndrome, co-author of a concept of abzymes and their impact into the pathogenesis of autoimmunity conditions, and as one of the pioneers in promoting the Concept of PPPM into a practical branch of health services.

Predictive, Preventive and Personalized Medicine, Immunology, Medicine, Pathology

Dr. Qing Kay Li is an associate professor of pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She has the American Board of Pathology certification in anatomic and clinical pathology, and subspecialty certification in cytopathology. Her areas of clinical expertise include surgical pathology and cytopathology. Dr. Li is also a faculty member and co-PI at the Johns Hopkins Biomarker Discovery Center.

Her research interests are focusing on the application of advanced cellular and molecular techniques to the field of cytopathology and cancer biology, particularly in the field of early detection of lung and prostate cancer.

Dr. Hoque is an Associate Professor of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, Urology and Oncology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Hoque completed dental and oral surgery training at the Dhaka Dental College, Dhaka University, Bangladesh. He then moved to Japan for the completion of Ph.D degree, where he also completed Advanced Clinical Training in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and Oncology. After training in Japan, he worked in the Head and Neck Cancer Research Division as a Postdoctoral Fellow under the mentorship of Dr. David Sidransky. He joined as a faculty member in 2006 in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. His research interests includes: a) To understand molecular biologic basis of head and neck, lung and genitourinary cancer b) To develop and validate genetic and epigenetic approach for early cancer diagnosis, cancer risk assessment and cancer prognosis and c) To identify molecular alterations due to environmental exposures such as active smoking, passive smoking and arsenic.

Develop and validate genetic and epigenetic approach for early cancer diagnosis, cancer risk assessment and cancer prognosis; Molecular biologic basis of head and neck, lung and genitourinary cancer.

Kenji Suzuki, Ph.D. (by Published Work; Nagoya University) worked at Hitachi Medical Corporation, Japan, Aichi Prefectural University, Japan, as a faculty member, and in Department of Radiology, University of Chicago, as Assistant Professor. In 2014, he joined Department of Electric and Computer Engineering and Medical Imaging Research Center, Illinois Institute of Technology, as Associate Professor. He published more than 300 papers (including 110 peer-reviewed journal papers). He is inventor on 30 patents (including 12 granted patents), which were licensed to several companies and commercialized. He published 10 books and 22 book chapters, and edited 12 journal special issues. He was awarded/co-awarded more than 25 grants as PI including NIH R01 and ACS. He served as the Editor of a number of leading international journals, including Pattern Recognition and Medical Physics. He served as a referee for 80 international journals, an organizer of 25 international conferences, and a program committee member of 145 international conferences. He received 25 awards.

Radiology

Zhigang Kang has completed his PhD from University of Helsinki, Finland and Post-doctoral studies from NIMH, NIH. He is a Research Scientist in Molecular Target Core, Genetics Branch, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute and an employee of Basic Science Program, Leidos Biomedical Research, Inc., Frederick. He has been working in the field of cancer biomarkers for the past 7 years. His research interests focus on the detection of invasive tumor biomarkers include circulating tumor cell (CTC), cell free circulating tumor DNA and clinical relevance protein markers from peripheral blood of patients with various types of tumors.

His research interests focus on the detection of invasive tumor biomarkers include circulating tumor cell (CTC), cell free circulating tumor DNA and clinical relevance protein markers from peripheral blood of patients with various types of tumors.

David I Smith completed his Ph.D. at the age of 23 years from the University of Wisconsin in Madison and then did post-doctoral studies at the University of California in Irvine. Since 1996 he has been a Professor at the Mayo Clinic in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology. He is also the Chairman of the Technology Assessment Group for the Center for Individualized Medicine at the Mayo Clinic. His laboratory studies the common fragile sites and the role that these regions of instability play in the development of cancer. His group also studies the different ways that HPV can contribute to the development of different cancers. He has published over 200 papers in reputed journals and serves on the Editorial Board of a number of journals.

His group also studies the different ways that HPV can contribute to the development of different cancers. He has published over 200 papers in reputed journals and serves on the Editorial Board of a number of journals.

Dimitrios H. Roukos is currently working as Founding Director, Centre for Biosystems & Synthetic Genomic Network Medicine - CBS. GenNetMed Ioannina University- Ioannina, Greece. He is also Leader at Translational Research, European Network of Excellence (EUNE) for Gastric Cancer (since 2006) and affiliated to Department of Surgery, Ioannina University Hospital , Ioannina , Greece (since 1990). Dr. D. Roukos has graduated from Athens University School of Medicine, Greece. He underwent specialist training in surgery at the J.W.Goethe-University Hospital in Frankfurt a.M., Germany where received his Doctorate (Dr.med). He moved back to Greece and since 1990 works at the Ioannina University School of Medicine.

Genetics, Pathology, Biomarkers, Systems biology & and cancer networks