TGen selected as Centre of Innovation

Waters Corporation recognised the Center for Proteomics at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) as a Waters Center of Innovation.

The corporation specifically recognised Dr Konstantinos Petritis, Head of TGen’s Center for Proteomics, and his team for their leadership in the research of proteomics and biomarker discovery and verification.

In a ceremony at TGen’s headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, TGen President and Research Director Dr Jeffrey Trent told TGen employees and representatives from Waters Corporation that TGen is moving with a great sense of urgency towards helping cancer patients.

“Whether it’s through our discovery-based research or our clinical programs, our focus is to provide patient benefit as quickly as we can. My hope and expectation is that in many unique ways the Waters Centers of Innovation Program will help us accelerate our research and further our goal of providing personalised medicine to each patient in the future,” said Dr Trent.

“It was Dr Trent’s vision for translational medicine that led us to the relationship we have with TGen today. By formalising our relationship with them we want to help TGen achieve its objectives and make personalised medicine a reality, partly by taking technology to the next level. I look forward to doing good science together for years to come,” said Mark Groudas, Waters Sr Vice President, Americas Business Operations.

TGen is now among an elite group of fewer than 20 partners worldwide that are part of the Waters Centers of Innovation. While most of the member institutes of this circle are well established, TGen (created in 2002) is one of the youngest organisations to be named.

“One of our core strengths is in biomarker discovery and verification. With the infrastructure we’ve put into place, we are making steady progress in the development of diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers for lung, colon, breast and pancreatic cancer as well as other diseases. We’re thankful to Waters for their support of our programs, not just in terms of instrumentation, but in terms of their training, technical support and services,” said Dr Petritis.

Dr Petritis is one of the few select researchers participating in the Waters Center of Innovation Program. Others include Prof Jeremy Nicholson, Imperial College London; Prof John Engen, Northeastern University, Boston, Mass; Prof James Scrivens, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK; Prof David Cowan of Kings College London; Prof Arthur Moseley of Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; Prof Julie Leary of the University of California - Davis; and Prof Albert J Fornace, Jr, Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, Washington, DC; Prof Marcos Eberlin, University of Campinas, Brazil; Joseph Dalluge, University of Minnesota; Prof Ganesh Anand, National University of Singapore; Dr Chang Hsu, Future Fuels Institute; and Prof Vladimir Shulaev, University of North Texas Department of Biological Sciences.

TGen’s Center for Proteomics laboratory currently uses Waters Synapt G2 High Definition Mass Spectrometer and several ACQUITY UPLC/Xevo TQ-S Mass Spectrometer LC/MS/MS systems in support of its research.