Preeminent Scientists Named to Scientific Advisory Board for Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Seven preeminent, world-class scientists in the fields of genomics, chemistry, biophysics, proteomics and computational biology have been named to the Scientific Advisory Board for the Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics.

They will help guide and advance the center's research objectives, which will focus on the development of new biological products -- including revolutionary new drugs -- using powerful supercomputers to interpret data from the Human Genome Project.

The scientists are: Charles R. Cantor, Ph.D., chief scientific officer and member, board of directors, SEQUENOM, Inc.; John K. Cowell, Ph.D., D.Sc., chairman, Department of Cancer Genetics, Roswell Park Cancer Institute and professor, Cellular and Molecular Biology Program,

Roswell Park Graduate Division of the University at Buffalo; Herbert Hauptman, Ph.D., Nobel Laureate and president of Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute; Barry Honig, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics, Columbia University; Eugene V. Koonin, Ph.D., senior investigator with the Evolutionary Genomics Research Group at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) of the National Library of Medicine, a department of the National Institutes of Health; Michael Levitt, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Structural Biology, Stanford University School of Medicine, and Harold Scheraga, Ph.D., George W. and Grace L. Todd Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, in the Baker Laboratory of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell University.

"Assembly of this prestigious group of scientists is an important milestone in the creation of the Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics," said Elizabeth D. Capaldi, provost of the University at Buffalo, the lead research partner in the Buffalo center. "Each of them is internationally known and their involvement in the Center of Excellence will help us achieve and maintain a commanding lead in the science of bioinformatics."

Added Jeffrey Skolnick, director of the Buffalo center and UB Distinguished Professor in the Department of Structural Biology, UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences: "The impressive caliber of this scientific board positions the Buffalo center as a leader in this exciting new field and reflects the immense potential of our endeavor. The board's expertise will help Buffalo realize the tremendous scientific and economic benefits of bioinformatics."

Cantor previously served as professor and chair in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Biophysics, and director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology at Boston University. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, he has held faculty positions at Columbia University and University of California at Berkeley, and was director of the Human Genome Center of the Department of Energy at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.

He has published more than 350 peer-reviewed articles and has been granted more than 54 patents. He co-authored a three-volume textbook on biophysical chemistry and the first textbook on genomics, titled "Genomics: The Science and Technology of the Human Genome Project."

Cowell joined the staff of Roswell Park Cancer Institute in 2000, having previously served as director of the Center for Molecular Genetics at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (CCF) Lerner Research Institute and as CCF Professor of Clinical Chemistry at Cleveland State University.

Cowell's research focuses on molecular genetics of cancer and cancer predisposition, molecular analysis of neuroblastoma, molecular genetic changes in leukemia, and genetic analysis of brain tumors and breast cancer. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters and has edited two books.

Hauptman is a world-renowned mathematician who pioneered and developed a mathematical method that changed the field of chemistry and opened a new era in research in determination of molecular structures of crystallized materials. His methods are routinely used to solve complicated structures. It was the application of this mathematical method to a wide variety of chemical structures that led the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to name Hauptman recipient of a 1985 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

His current work is concerned with the development of methods for determining molecular structures using X-ray diffraction. He has served as president of the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute since 1987 and previously served as the institute's research director.

Honig is a biophysicist who specializes in bioinformatics and in developing theoretical methods for analyzing the physical chemical properties of macromolecules. He is noted for innovating methods to compute and display the electrostatic potentials of macromolecules based on their 3D structures. The computer programs DelPHi and GRASP were developed in his laboratory and are widely used by the academic and industrial communities.

He is president of the Biophysical Society, a recipient of an NIH Merit Award and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator. He serves on the editorial boards of several journals and has published more than 190 scientific papers.

Koonin's work is concentrated on sequence analysis, protein structure/function analysis and gene identification. His research interests cover a wide range of topics in computational biology and information science, including database searching algorithms, low-complexity sequences, sequence signals, mathematical models of evolution, statistical methods in virology, dynamical behavior of chemical reaction systems, statistical text-retrieval algorithms, protein structure and function prediction, comparative genomics, taxonomic trees and population genetics

His Evolutionary Genomics Research Group has developed computational methods for isolating clusters of orthologous groups -- appearances of the same gene in different organisms -- across the 40 or so completes genomic sequences now in the public domain. He has published more than 300 research articles and is on the scientific advisory board of Inpharmatica, a London-based computational biology company.

Levitt is a newly elected member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is known for his work in computational biology, especially protein folding. His pioneering use of an all-atom potential energy function and Cartesian coordinate energy minimization on an entire protein made molecular dynamics simulations possible. This also led to the popular Jack-Levitt method for refining coordinates against X-ray data.

Levitt also pioneered simulation of protein unfolding in solution, emphasizing qualitative aspects and using film to show protein motion. Primarily focused on proteins, he has contributed to the computational structural biology of DNA and RNA. Using sequence/structure analysis and bioinformatics, he has classified folds in genomic sequences and compared results of sequence alignment with those of structure. He has developed methods to combine distant homology searches with automated modeling. These results have been combined in the BioSpace database, which lists more than 4,100 trials in 350 disease targets.

Scheraga is one of the pioneers of protein folding. His experimental work involves genetic engineering and hydrodynamic, spectroscopic immunochemical and other physicochemical measurements on proteins, synthetic polymers of amino acids and model compounds. His theoretical work involves statistical mechanical studies of aqueous solutions of amino acids and peptides. Much of his research involves the determination of the pathways of folding of proteins, and the mechanism of action of thrombin on fibrinogen, an important reaction in the blood clotting process.

His lab is investigating interactions that dictate the folding of a polypeptide chain in water into the three-dimensional structure of a native protein and determine the reactivity of a protein molecule with other small and large molecules. He has published more than 1,000 papers, is a recipient of numerous awards and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Buffalo Center for Excellence in Bioinformatics was proposed by Gov. Pataki in his January 2001 "State of the State" address as a vehicle to create jobs and revitalize the Western New York economy. In June, praising the private sector for pledging to invest more than $150 million in the center, the governor pledged $110 million in state funds, including $61 million to UB for the Center for Excellence, for construction and equipment of a three-building Buffalo Life Sciences Complex in downtown Buffalo. One of the buildings will house the work of the center.

Private-sector investors in the Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics -- including corporate giants HP, Veridian, Informax and Stryker Communications -- have pledged to invest more than $150 million in the center to date. Also on the list of partners are Dell Computer Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc., Invitrogen Corp., Q-Chem, SGI, Amersham Pharmacia Biotech, AT&T, Wyeth Lederle, Human Genome Sciences, Inc. and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The UB Center for Excellence is expected to produce a huge impact on the economies of Western New York and upstate New York, creating thousands of jobs for the region, spinning-off new businesses developed from research projects at the center and luring new businesses to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, which is anticipated to grow around the center.

UB's new Office of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach is gearing up to assist businesses and faculty interested in commercializing the intellectual property and scientific products of the center.