September 1, 2005 (Vol. 1, No. 4) Scientific Updates Administrative Updates Biomarker Team Spotlight Key Web Pages at FHCRC

Dear Colleagues:

We would like to extend our thanks to Dr. Myeong-Hee Yu and her colleagues for hosting the informatics pre-meeting led by Dr. Martin McIntosh in Seoul. A brief report of this meeting is included. This newsletter issue also highlights the biomarker discovery team led by Dr. Hyang-Sook Yoo.

Other updates include the formation of a new team from Hong Kong; Dr. Sam Hanash has joined the Steering Committee, and a reminder to register for the October 11-12 meetings.

Best regards,

Lee Hartwell
President and Director
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Report from Informatics Pre-Meeting – August 22-23, 2005

Representatives from five biomarker discovery teams met recently at the Functional Proteomics Center in Seoul to discuss informatics resources and expertise within the consortium. In this two day meeting, hosted by Dr. Myeong-Hee Yu and led by Dr. Martin McIntosh, the informatics working group began developing a model for collaboration. It was agreed that the ICBC should not adopt a "coordinating center" model for enforcing analytic methods or prescriptions. However, the group recognized the importance of a central source that curates data and performs common processing for re-display to the ICBC members in order to foster collaborations. There was general consensus that the FHCRC lead the cross-site data integration and informatics using the CPAS system. Many groups plan to adopt all or part of the CPAS platform developed at FHCRC. However, it is clear that no single platform will be able to manage the analytic procedures and expertise of the entire consortia.

The working group discussed the ability to communicate experimental procedures in a common and defined manner to consortia members. Several sites with their own experimental annotation procedures and databases agreed in principle to evaluate approaches to communicate experiments in the XAR file format that is currently under development at FHCRC. The informatics working group will present their recommendations to the consortium at the October meeting.

First International Biomarker Consortium Meeting — October 11-12, 2005

The International Cancer Biomarker Consortium Meeting is planned for October 11-12, 2005 in Seattle, Washington. There is no limit to the number of representatives that may be sent from each team. However, the conference fund can only cover lodgings for 5 representatives for each existing team, and one representative from forming teams. Individual teams will have to cover lodging costs for additional representatives. Please contact Karma Kreizenbeck (kkreizen@fhcrc.org) or Gail Campagna (gcampagn@fhcrc.org) with any questions.

Team Profiles

Last month we highlighted a profile from a U.S. team. This month, we would like to present the profile of the first team to partner with us in this endeavor. In coming months, we will highlight every team in the consortium and post these profiles on the consortium website.

Team Description

Brief Description of Project:

Cancer is the first cause of deaths in Korea with annual incidence of over 100,000 cases and the cost for diagnosis and treatment is over 1.3 trillion Won. It is an emerging consensus among physicians and oncologists that early detection of cancer is the most promising way of treating the disease and decreasing the death rate.

The advent of new and sensitive proteome analysis technologies has opened new possibilities of developing biomarkers in serum, which can be utilized in the diagnosis of early cancers through a casual blood test. The current technologies allow detection of low femtomole quantity proteins in appropriate experimental conditions. In addition to the sensitivity, many other technologies have been developed in the area of enrichment of low abundant proteins in serum, sensitive protein tagging, and high throughput proteome analysis.

The nature of massive sample analysis and new technology dependence in the efficient discovery of clinically useful biomarkers has led to the proposal and formation of national and international collaborative networks. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC) is leading an international consortium on the biomarker discovery, which could facilitate the material and technology sharing, and collective analysis of large and diverse data.

In the current project, we will carry out a biomarker discovery program in collaboration with the international efforts led by FHCRC. We will serve as a branch site of the international consortium and conduct a massive biomarker discovery study concentrated on cancers such as gastric and liver cancer that affect the Korean population.

Team Members and Expertise:

Hyang-Sook YOO, Ph.D.
Seong-Eon RYU, Ph.D.
Jong Shin YOO, Ph.D
Dae-Yeul YU, Ph.D
Hyo Jeong HONG. Ph.D.
Jonghwa BHAK, Ph.D
Young Sung KIM, Ph. D
In-Pyo CHOI, Ph.D

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