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Yu-Ju Chen, HUPO President, Institute of Chemistry, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

It is truly a great honor and a big responsibility to serve as the HUPO president in the coming two years. Since the past January, I have joined the HUPO EC and witnessed the great efforts from the leadership team led by Past President Steve Pennington and Vice-President Susan Weintraub. Among the many impressive HUPO achievements, perhaps most notable and quite unique to everyone is the HUPO Connect 2020 – the very first virtual congress for HUPO. The HUPO leadership together with supports from HPP, committees, council members, speakers and sponsors have jointly turned the challenges of COVID-19 outbreak into a landmark congress in the history of HUPO. Big thank you to Steve and Sue for your contribution and congratulation to the achievements made in the past two years. From my personal view, this is the uniqueness of HUPO that we have devoted and passionate colleagues to create an inclusive and energetic infrastructure for promoting proteomics activities. I am looking forward to working with you all to enjoy proteomics activities and to translate it into knowledge in biology, health and disease as well as tools to impact our life.

Despite the unexpected and devastating economic and social disruption caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, it indeed created an opportunity to demonstrate the global proteomic exploration to enhance our molecular understanding for the emerging disease and to facilitate development of new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. Exciting researches are exemplified in the power of multidimensional data integrating proteomics with clinical data and machine-learning-based models for risk stratification of patients, construction of SARS-CoV-2 protein interaction network to reveal the pathogenesis mechanism as well as to identify targets for drug repurposing, identification of biomarkers and rapid development of high throughput diagnosis tools for the clinical trajectory of patients. In addition to continue to promote the International collaboration in infectious diseases from the HUPO initiative, I look forward to facilitate efforts in standardization of protocols and diagnosis methods and multi-nation clinical trial within the HUPO community. The example of COVID19 may also apply to other diseases to promote precision medicine for sustainable health.

The Human Proteome Project (HPP) is well recognized as the signature for HUPO’s research activities. The release of “ A High-Stringency Blueprint of the Human Proteome” in 2020 established the legacy of the first decade of the HUPO HPP in defining the constitutions of the complex proteome with 90% coverage based on stringent criteria. I would like to express my great appreciation to the HPP leadership led by Gil Omenn, Mark Baker and Robert Moritz, advisory board and many colleagues who have contributed to HPP in the past years. Looking ahead, the human proteome blueprint is definitely the foundation of future proteomics research.

Despite our many successes, there remains much to be done to demonstrate the utility of proteomics. To date, advancements of genomics have changed the face of biology and medicine. Despite the fact that proteins are the molecules to be targeted for many therapies, however, gene testing is gold standard and protein-based diagnosis is not well accepted as clinical assay yet. Stepping into the next 10 years of HPP, I believe that proteomics will take a similar path like genomics to create benefits of our life. To speed up the process, we can jointly define focused themes, reachable milestones and strategies to transform proteomics into utilizes in many aspects of life, such as clinical care, prevention medicine, precision agriculture, and food safety.　

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”- African proverb.

This is my firm belief that joint wisdoms and collaborative efforts always inspire new ideas with success beyond the expectation of a single mind. After 20 years since the launch of HUPO in 2001, we are now stepping into the next phase of proteomics. It is time to redefine the forward-looking goals and strategic planning for HUPO to create impact to biology, health and society. I will continue the inclusive culture of HUPO and sincerely encourage our members and everyone who loves proteomics from different part of the world to work together and demonstrate the power of proteomics to impact our life in the future.