Speaker: W. Andy Tao, Purdue University

Topic: Analyses of Protein Phosphorylation and Their Applications in Liquid Biopsy

Date: Monday, February 11, 2019

Time: 6:15 pm Dinner, 7:15 pm Presentation

Location: University of Maryland College Park, room 1208, Biology-Psychology building, 4066 Campus Drive, College Park, MD 20742 (parking: 200 Regents Dr, College Park, MD 20742) (Directions)

Dinner: Please RSVP to Yan Wang (yanwang@umd.edu) by Friday, February 8th if you will be attending dinner.

Abstract: Protein kinases and their substrates comprise extensive signaling networks that regulate many diverse cellular functions. However, methods and techniques to systematically identify kinases directly responsible for specific phosphorylation events have remained elusive. Here we describe integrated proteomic strategies to dissect kinase networks in high throughput and demonstrate their applications in multiple systems. Our group has introduced a set of chemical tools and proteomics strategies to analyze protein phosphorylation, in particular, to identify direct kinase substrates and upstream kinases. Recently, for the first time, we identified thousands of phosphoproteins isolated from small volumes of plasma samples and quantitatively measured phosphoproteins that are significantly higher in patients diagnosed with breast cancer as compared to healthy controls. Our studies demonstrate that the development of phosphoproteins as disease biomarkers is highly feasible and may transform disease early detection and monitoring.