HUPO Awards - 2019 RECIPIENTS

The Distinguished Achievement in Proteomic Sciences Award recognizes a scientist for distinguished scientific achievements in the field of proteomic science.

(Sponsored by the Journal of Proteome Research - ACS Publications)

Jennifer Van Eyk
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, USA

Dr. Van Eyk is an extraordinary scientist and a world leader in the area of clinical proteomics. She has a longstanding record of excellence in applying cutting-edge analytical technologies to address clinically relevant biological hypotheses and in translation into clinical therapies or diagnostics. Dr. Van Eyk has pioneered research focusing on understanding the molecular mechanism underlying acute and chronic cardiac disease and the development of clinically robust circulating biomarkers for personalization of medical care. Particularly, she well-known for working on cardiac troponin I and its functionally and clinically important phosphorylation and selective proteolysis that is differentially induced with myocardial ischemia, hemodynamics stress and heart failure.

Dr. Van Eyk is a selfless mentor and a role model especially for women scientists and made tremendous impact in their career development. She has trained 17 MSc/PhD students, 24 post-doctoral fellows and 4 MD’s. Her strengths in leadership, innovation and ability to move discoveries toward the clinic makes Dr. Van Eyk a worthy winner for the HUPO 2019 Distinguished Achievement in Proteomics Science Award.

Discovery in Proteomic Sciences Award

The Discovery in Proteomic Sciences Award recognizes a scientist for a single discovery in the field of proteomics.

(Sponsored by Journal of Proteomics - ELSEVIER BV)

Shared by two recipients

Anne-Claude Gingras
Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Canada

Dr. Gingras is a tenacious scientist with a research focus on protein-protein interactions. Since protein-protein interactions and protein complexes underpin nearly all cellular functions, proteomics must move beyond the description of overall protein identities and abundances to provide a clearer picture of biology. Protein-protein interactions are also often dysregulated in disease such as cancer, and can often be targeted by pharmacological compounds, making them attractive drug targets. Dr. Gingras has contributed to the development of interaction proteomics methods that discriminate between true interactors of a protein and background contaminants. Some of these achievements include detailed experimental protocols and development or co-development of bioinformatics tools that enable improved analysis of protein-protein interactions by the research community. These tools extend her impact to reach beyond her work in unravelling key interaction changes that occur through the activation of signaling pathways in health and disease. Dr. Gingras has published landmark papers that defined the organization of the yeast kinase-phosphatase network, the human HSP90 co-chaperone machinery and the RNA-associated stress granules and P-bodies, to name but a few. For her contribution to the development of multiple methods to study interactomes, HUPO is proud to bestow the 2019 Discovery in Proteomics award to Dr. Gingras.

John R. Yates III
Scripps Research Institute, USA

Professor Yates has significantly contributed to advances in proteomics and protein biochemistry throughout a career spanning more than 35 years which is supported by his outstanding publication record (>123,000 citations, h-index 174). Dr. Yates research spans molecular measurements using mass spectrometry, the earliest bioinformatic tools to interpret this mass spectrometry data, and chemical methods to enhance the coverage and quantification of proteins by mass spectrometry. His latest research is focused on the development and application of mass spectrometry-based proteomic advancements to answer important questions related to cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia and depression. This includes a recent study where he and his team provide comprehensive insights into the molecular disease mechanisms of cystic fibrosis, one of the most common inherited childhood diseases caused by deletion of a single codon for F508 in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene, causing loss of function of CFTR, the major cause of cystic fibrosis. These studies also have led to the identification of processes and proteins capable of restoring function to mutated and unfolded proteins in the disease. This discovery has impacted the field of cystic fibrosis and in proteomics by providing a novel approach for the comprehensive identification and analysis of membrane protein interactomes and their dynamics that can be applied to a variety of other studies and potentially help to discover similar disease mechanisms, and it demonstrates the power of intelligent proteomic approaches to answer fundamental questions in biology and medicine. Prof. Yates is an innovative and thought-provoking researcher that has contributed numerous methods to comprehensively study proteomes to highlight the biological context in question in quantitative approaches. We applaud the many achievements to date by Prof John R. Yates III with recognition by the 2019 HUPO Discovery in Proteomics award.

Clinical and Translational Proteomics Award

This award recognizes a scientist in the field of clinical and translational proteomics.

(Sponsored by Clinical Proteomics - BioMed Central)

Marius Ueffing
University of Tübingen, Institute for Ophthalmic Research Centre for Ophthalmology, Germany

Dr. Ueffing has developed research strategies to combine bioanalytic, proteomic, functional genomics and computational research towards investigation of disease mechanisms and markers. His efforts impact clinical proteomics towards understanding and targeting mechanisms of a number of debilitating diseases. Dr. Ueffing has recently co-discovered 3 new rare diseases as ciliopathies using proteomic methods, and he has applied translational bioanalytical and computational approaches towards better diagnostics and therapies for oncological, neurological and neurosensory diseases with a strong focus on uncovering molecular mechanism. In addition, Dr. Ueffing has discovered that the mutant Parkinson disease associated LRRK2 acts as a protein kinase perturbing vesicular trafficking in CNS neurons that has exploited by initiating pharmacological strategies to target LRRK2. Mapping and functionally characterizing large protein networks associated with Parkinson’s disease, syndromic ciliopathies and retinal degeneration, Dr. Ueffing and coworkers have contributed to understand disease on a molecular level and have enabled development of differential clinical diagnosis based on understanding of the impact of mutations and risk variants associated with these diseases discovering new targets for intervention. These achievements allow improved risk prediction and patient stratification according to molecular constraints and rational strategies for therapy development accompanied, and supported, by protein based biosignatures. Dr. Ueffing’s significant contributions to clinical translational efforts utilizing proteomics makes him a most worthy winner of the 2019 HUPO Clinical and Translational Proteomics award.

Science and Technology Award

The Science and Technology Award recognizes an individual or team in private industry who played a key role in commercialization of a proteomics technology, product, or procedure. The emphasis for the award is on making the technology, product, or procedure widely available, which is different from the basic scientific invention.

(Sponsored by the HUPO Industrial Advisory Board)

Scott Tanner, Vladimir Baranov, Olga Ornatsky and Dmitry Bandura
Fluidigm, USA

This team, comprising Dr. Scott Tanner, Dr. Vladimir Baranov, Dr. Olga Ornatsky and Dr. Dmitry Bandura, set out in 2005 to apply ICP-MS (TOF) technology in pursuit of high-parameter single cell proteomics. As previous colleagues at MDS Sciex and MDS Proteomics, the four MS technology pioneers set up a lab at the University of Toronto to develop a unique high-parameter mass cytometry. technology that brings unprecedented understanding of single cell proteomics. The technology was originally conceived by the team while working at PerkinElmer-Sciex and at the University of Toronto, and was spun out into a company by the four colleagues, founders of DVS (now part of Fluidigm Inc), that ultimately commercialized the MS-based system called CyTOF and has been described in more than 40 scientific papers related to mass cytometry. The team are the inventors of 44 issued patents and more than 70 pending patent applications.

Over 250 CyTOF systems are in use daily across 4 continents in driving critical biological discoveries. Fluidigm employs nearly 500 people throughout the world supporting the use of Mass Cytometry in the work of some of the leading academic and pharmaceutical organizations globally. The CyTOF technology now drives many applications both in research and Clinical analysis in single cell proteomics including the most groundbreaking work in Immune Oncology, the subject of the 2018 Nobel Prize for Medicine. The ability to monitor biological systems with highly specific prescribed protein markers through the use of metal conjugated antibodies has resulted in incredibly important discoveries that impact cancer, stem cell research, neurology and immunology. In its endeavors to promote Industrial orientated Proteomics based research, HUPO awards the 2019 Science and Technology Award to the worthy winners, Dr’s Tanner, Baranov, Ornatsky and Bandura.

Distinguished Service Award