HUPO Awards - 2020 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)

Shared by two recipients

Fuchu He
Beijing Proteome Research Center China

Dr. He is the leading scientist studying proteomics in China and liver proteomics in the world. He was the founder of Chinese arm of HUPO (CNHUPO) and among the first group of people who founded HUPO in 2001. He was the first Chinese scientist who led an international consortium- Human Liver Proteome Project (HLPP), and the founder of Beijing Proteome Research Center, Phoenix Center (proteomics) and Institutes of Biomedical Sciences Fudan University. The past 21 years have witnessed his great contributions and impact to the field of proteomics. He initiated over 10 programs of proteomics research in China, successfully organized 13 international and national proteomics conferences and over 30 training courses, including the 3rd HUPO Congress, the 6th AOHUPO Congress and Nature Conference: Life science in the age of big data, which greatly promoted proteomics research in China and beyond. Through his tireless efforts, China now is a power house in the area of proteomics and has contributed significantly the global landscapes of proteomics.

Karin Rodland
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Oregon Health Sciences University USA

Dr. Karin Rodland’s many achievements include her decades long commitment to the application of cutting-edge mass spectrometry technologies to compelling biological problems. She has provided biological focus to the proteomics group at PNNL since 2002, insuring that the technologies were applied to the most significant biomedical problems and that issues of experimental design and data analysis reflected the needs of the biomedical community. Dr. Rodland has published extensively in the field of proteomics, on the use of mass spectrometry to further understanding of basic biological processes. She was among the first to characterize the role of the G-protein coupled calcium-sensing receptor in modulating proliferation-associated signal transduction pathways. However, her impact can be better quantified in terms of her unique ability to establish collaborations that bring cutting-edge proteomics technologies into the translational cancer medicine space through the application of proteogenomics to understand drug response and therapeutic resistance.

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

Benjamin Garcia
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine USA

Dr. Ben Garcia has for a long time developed novel MS based experimental and computational platforms for characterization of histone PTMs. These methods include: (i) Development of advanced methodology for Bottom Up MS improved quantification and high-throughput analyses of histone PTMs. (ii) Generation of new chromatographic and Middle Down MS based methods for high-throughput quantitative tracking of thousands of combinatorial Histone Codes in a single experiment. (iii) Creation of novel approaches using quantitative MS in combination with in vivo metabolic labeling of specific PTMs to monitor the progression and dynamics of distinct histone modifications during their cellular lifespan and in response to external perturbation. (iv) Combining genomic approaches with MS to characterize specific regions of the genome with the goal of analyzing all the histone PTMs and non-histone proteins found on individual genes. (v) Development of structural mass spectrometry approaches to understand the make-up and structure/conformation of the repeating unit of chromatin, the nucleosome. His impact in the area of histone proteomics cannot be overstated, and his work has been transformative across multiple fields of study. Lastly, the many novel histone PTMs, variants and mutations he has discovered have spurned a multitude of further studies by chromatin biologists who are now devoting significant efforts to study their underlying function and consequence in human biology and disease.

Ben Collins
Queen's University Belfast, School of Biological Sciences, Belfast, Ireland

Dr. Ben Collins is among the most prominent members of a rapidly growing research community that have transformed DIA from an attractive conceptual curiosity into the robust, benchmarked and widely used technique. Ben’s advances include: • Developing AP-SWATH method to characterize dynamic changes in protein interaction networks. • Co-leading an international consortium of 11 labs that demonstrated high interlab and intralab robustness and reproducibility of DIA data in large cohorts. • Having a leading role in developing robust FDR estimation methods in large datasets acquired by DIA. These are now recognized as standard and prevent, at an early stage of the technology, problems of false positive inflation. • Senior contributor to the development of the SEC-SWATH method to quantify the organization and redistribution of cellular protein complexes in perturbed systems. The improvements in data quality and robustness enabled by DIA are now driving the adoption of proteomic approaches more broadly in life sciences and will continue to do so as further developments are made. Ben has played a major role in this process both from the technology development and application perspectives.

Clinical and Translational Proteomics Award

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

(Sponsored by Clinical Proteomics - BioMed Central)

Tadashi Yamamoto
Biofluid Biomarker Center, Niigata University Japan

Dr. Tadashi Yamamoto is a pioneer of proteomics of kidney diseases and urine biomarker discovery since he engaged in the HUPO Human Kidney & Urine Proteome Project (HKUPP) as the chair in 2005 and contributed in a major way to the introduction of proteomics in nephrology. During his chairmanship for about 10 years, the HKUPP provided the HKUPP guide for urine sample collection for urine proteomics and collected proteome datasets of urine, kidney and urinary tract organ through international collaborations. Dr. Yamamoto and his colleagues have developed protocols for proteomics of formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded human kidney biopsy tissues and analyzed chronic kidney disease (CKD) with glomerular sections collected by a laser micro-dissection system to understand protein interactions in the glomerulus by proteomics. Dr. Yamamoto is now expanding this approach to discover biomarkers for other diseases, such as diabetes and its complication and cancers by establishing urinary native peptide separation and label-free peptidomics as well. The proteomic analysis of patient kidney biopsy samples introduced by Dr. Yamamoto opened new insights into kidney tissue injury and reactions, which are not easily evaluated by regular pathological examination. The individual biopsy tissue proteomics will help understand disease conditions more precisely than histology and will contribute to precision medicine of CKD patients. In addition, the discovery of urine biomarkers for kidney segment-specific injuries will not only contribute to individual CKD patient care by the precise recognition of kidney injuries but also to facilitate development of new treatments for CKD, which have not achieved yet, by providing the urine biomarkers for evaluation of efficiency of new treatments. Dr. Yamamoto is developing a proteomics assay systems in clinical laboratories for evaluation of hundreds of urinary biomarkers at once and has already achieved a throughput to analyze more than one thousand proteins in individual urine sample at a speed of ~50 analyses a day. Such proteomics systems may be used as a general laboratory equipment in the future for quantitation of multiple disease markers in urine since it does not need to develop antibodies as immunoassay.

Science and Technology Award