New applications for tissue mapping
Welcome to the blog of Dr. Michael Gerdes. I am a cancer cell biologist working in the Biosciences organization of GE’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna, NY. I joined the team here over 4 years ago after completing my research training in experimental carcinogenesis at the National Cancer Institute, and prior, my doctoral work in cell biology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX. I have been involved with our Molecular Pathology program and the talented cross disciplinary team of biologists, chemists, bio-informatics, engineers and image analysis specialists, from the beginning. The work of this team is now largely directed towards oncology and linking patient drug response to disease markers as described in my co-worker Fiona Ginty’s blog entries. As well, you can view a video on YouTube that features me talking on some of these projects at the recent Healthymagination showcase in NYC.
While we have shared some of the work we are doing with the pharmaceutical industry, our tissue mapping technologies are finding new applications on a regular basis. Since its early inception, I have known this simple technology could be used in many different ways to probe biological samples, and it would be only a matter of finding the right applications where it could have a big impact on the biomedical research community. In the past 4 years, I have met with researchers involved in many aspects of cancer biology, genetics, cellular, neural, and developmental biology to talk about our work and how we might transition these tools to other applications. While our work on cancer diagnostics will continue over in Dr. Ginty’s blog, I hope to share with you some of the new areas and applications in which we are taking this work.
Being situated in the Capital District of New York places us in an ideal location to interact with others in the research community. We have New York City to the south and Boston to the east placing strong research centers such as Memorial Sloan Kettering and Dana Farber within a couple hours drive. Additionally, we have access to a variety of researchers in the Albany area working in broad areas such as stem cell biology, cancer research at all levels, state forensics labs, and a rapidly growing nanotechnology sector. I am actively involved with a local cancer research group, Capital Region Cancer Research, or CRCR for short, and BioConnex (learn more about BioConnex here). Our Biosciences organization has actively participated in both of these groups to help build our network and foster collaborative partnerships. Finally, I have an adjunct-professor appointment at Univ. Albany, in the department of Biology (a link to the department Web site is here) and collectively involvement with these groups and activities have really plugged me into the local research community. Through these local institutions I am working towards establishing several new partnerships and application domains for our technology.
We recently announced the award of a federal stimulus award to develop with Dr. Melinda Larsen of SUNY-Albany Dept. of Biological Sciences (link), a comprehensive developmental analysis of the salivary gland. Developmental biology is a field that can benefit from the tools we have developed for understanding cancer biology due to the similarities of the tissues and cell types, the rapid growth and re-organization taking place, and many shared signaling mechanisms. Early in my training the concept of “cancer being a re-awakening of embryonic potential” was instilled in my philosophy and I still look at both of these fields as variations of one another. The project with Dr. Larsen will use the multiplexing methods and image analysis tools our team has built to examine patterns of protein expression in different cell populations over key developmental time-points. With the inclusion of phospho-proteins in the analysis, we will garner insight to the key signal transduction events at each developmental stage within specific cell populations. In theory, this will allow a small molecule strategy to be developed to allow for more specific differentiation of salivary pre-cursor cells, which would be an important step towards developing regeneration strategies. This work will cumulate in a visual atlas that will be publicly available to the greater research community and will hopefully provide a foundation for future such studies in other organ systems. Future blog entries will provide updates on this exciting project in addition to developments in other application domains for our multiplexing and data visualization technologies.
Dear Dr.Gerdes,
I was refereed to you by Dr.Schnider to talk about possibility of getting a job with your team using my skills in microsurgery and tissue imaging with my background in biology and biochemistry.
Looking forward to meet with you.
Sincerely
Wael.