4^th International Conference and Exhibition on Metabolomics & Systems Biology April 27-29, 2015 Philadelphia, USA

Chris Beecher is Chief Scientific Officer for IROA Technologies. He was a member of the Department of Pathology, University of Michigan School of Medicine until 2011 when he founded NextGen Metabolomics. He was also one of the founders of Metabolon, and Metabolic Analyses. His Ph.D. was granted in 1985 in Pharmaceutical Sciences specializing in Natural Products drug discovery. He has more than 25 years of experience in metabolomics and drug discovery and development, has published over 80 peer-reviewed papers, and is listed as the inventor of 8 patents in metabolomics.

Vladimir Tolstikov, Ph.D., is Scientist at Eli Lilly and Company. He received B.S. and M.S in Organic Chemistry in 1977 from M.V. Lomonosov Institute of Fine Chemical Technology, in Moscow, Russia. He received Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry in 1983 from the Institute of Chemical Means for Plant Protection, Moscow, Russia. He is a pioneer in HILIC separations development applied to Metabolomics. During his career he was working in leading research institutions in USA, Germany, Hungary and Russian Federation. He has joined Eli Lilly and Company in 2012. He is author contributor and participant of 45 conferences, 5 book chapters, and 54 articles.

He is an associate professor of pharmacology & toxicology.

Computational, analytical and statistical approaches for metabonomics and systems biology in human health

Bjoern Riefke, Head of Metabolic Profiling and Clinical Pathology, Bayer Schering Pharma After the study of Biology and his PhD in Zoology/Animal Physiology at the Heinrich-Heine-University in Duesseldorf, Germany Bjoern Riefke started to work as a research fellow in 1994 at the Institute of Diagnostic Research in Berlin. His main research field was the biological characterization of dyes for near-infrared in-vivo imaging. In 1998 he followed an offer of Schering AG to lead a research group at Justesa Imagen S.A. in Madrid, Spain as assistant manager and head of biological research and development in the field of X-ray contrast media research. In 2003 he moved back to Bayer Health Care Berlin (former Schering AG) and headed the group of early and mechanistic toxicology with research support for the early detection of safety liabilities of drug candidates and one year later headed the group of clinical pathology with the establishment of metabolic profiling technology in toxicology. Since 2005 he participated in the validation of new biomarkers within the HESI Nephrotoxicity Working Group. Beside the routine support and project related work the main area of interest are the application of metabolic profiling in toxicology and in pharmacological studies and the evaluation of new biomarkers for different organ toxicities in comparison to traditional endpoints of clinical pathology and histopathology in the context of toxicology testing.

Metabolic Profiling and Clinical Pathology

Dr. Jeff Patrick is the Director of Marketed Technology at LECO based in Saint Joseph, MI. He is responsible for applications, new products and marketing for their line of GC-TOF-MS Products. Prior to his role at LECO he was in the Pharmaceutical Industry as a leader in Bioanalytical Mass Spectrometry for 18 years. Jeff is a graduate of Purdue University (Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry) where he studied with Graham Cooks and the University of South Carolina (M.S.) where he studied with John Baynes. Jeff has more than 30 publications and book chapters to his credit.

Scott Tebbutt is Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Respiratory Medicine, University of British Columbia, and Principal Investigator at the James Hogg Research Centre, Institute for Heart + Lung Health, St. Paul’s Hospital, Vancouver, Canada. Since 2006, he has served as Co-Director of the Molecular Phenotyping and Genotyping Core of the James Hogg Research Centre, and he is currently Director of the Technology Development Core. He is also Chief Scientific Officer of the Prevention of Organ Failure (PROOF) Centre of Excellence, focused on heart, lung and kidney failure. Dr. Tebbutt earned his B.A. degree in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford (Oriel College), England in 1989, and his Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from the University of East Anglia in 1993 (supervised by Dr. David Lonsdale, Cambridge Laboratory, John Innes Centre, England). He pursued post-doctoral fellowships in the laboratories of Professor Ann Harris (University of Oxford, Institute of Molecular Medicine) and Professor Diana Hill (University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand), where he studied the molecular genetics of cystic fibrosis. He was appointed Research Fellow at the University of Otago (1995-2001), leading a research team investigating the genomics of the sheep cystic fibrosis locus. He was seconded to a start-up biotechnology company (Global Technologies (NZ) Ltd.) as Director of Genomics (1999-2001). He moved to Canada in 2001, and was Senior Researcher in the Centre for Biomedical Research (University of Victoria, 2001-2002), prior to being recruited to the James Hogg Research Centre (formerly the iCAPTURE Centre) at St. Paul’s Hospital, Vancouver (2002).

Dr. Tebbutt’s research programme is focused on the genomics of complex respiratory disease, including the early and late reactions in allergic asthma and rhinitis. He also leads a multidisciplinary collaboration to investigate interactions between fungal spores and human airway cells. His research combines hypothesis-driven study of biological mechanisms with the development of advanced tools and technology (including bioinformatics and microfluidics-based systems) to better facilitate basic and translational research. Dr. Tebbutt has published original research contributions in journals such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (U.S.A.), Journal of Medical Genetics, Genomics, BioTechniques, Bioinformatics, BMC Bioinformatics, BMC Medical Genomics and PLoS ONE. He has published numerous technical reviews as well as book chapters on the role of genetic variation in respiratory disease. He has served as reviewer on several grant panels, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, and he is Associate Editor for the journal BMC Genetics. Dr. Tebbutt has received several fellowships and awards, including an Edward Penley Abraham Research Trust Fellowship (U.K.), a Journal of Cell Science Traveling Fellowship Award, and a Research Fellowship from the Cystic Fibrosis Association of New Zealand. He has been awarded competitive research funding from organizations such as the National Sanitarium Association (Canada), the British Columbia Lung Association, AllerGen NCE Inc. (Allergy, Genes and Environment Network), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the BC Proteomics Network, and the Wellcome Trust (U.K.).

Dr. Vladimir E. Bondarenko is Assistant Professor at Georgia State University, USA. He did his Ph.D. Physics and Mathematics, Moscow State University, Russia, 1990. Dr. Bondarenko’s research interests include dynamical systems, neuronal and cardiac cell models, neural networks, models of cardiac arrhythmias, ion channel models.

dynamical systems, neuronal and cardiac cell models, neural networks, models of cardiac arrhythmias, ion channel models.

Paul L Wood has completed his Ph.D. from Queen’s University and postdoctoral studies from the NIMH. He is the director of the Metabolomics Unit at Lincoln Memorial University and is professor of pharmacology and physiology. He has published more than 280 peer-reviewed papers, serves as Editor-in-Chief of Metabolomics, and is a member of the editorial board of the JAOA.

Utilization of metabolomics to study mechanisms of pathogenesis in neurogegeneration and oncology

Deliang Guo is an Assistant professor at Department of Radiation Oncology, James Comprehensive Cancer Center, The Ohio State University Medical Center.

EGFR signaling, lipid metabolism

As an NIH-funded translational scientist and an Associate Professor at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Dr. Jay Kim aims to improving the means of objectively diagnosing IC/PBS and to discover the mechanistic basis for this disorder. She was originally trained as a cancer biologist at Harvard Medical School, and is a rising leader of research on basic urological diseases including IC/PBS. One of the major focus areas in her group is the study of the metabolic signature for the diagnosis of IC/PBS, using a number of approaches, including large-scale “Omics” methods, to elucidate the signaling network in human cells that is perturbed in IC/PBS.

Cancer Biology,Biomedical Sciences, surgery

Preeti Bais is associate scientist at the Computational Sciences group at the Jackson Lab’s new research institute at University of Connecticut - JAX Genomics Medicine (JGM). It is an independent, nonprofi t organization focusing on mammalian genetics research to advance human health. She holds a Ph.D. in bioinformatics and computational biology and has worked in the metabolomics fi eld for many years including her tenure as a principal scientist at Stemina Biomarker Discovery, where she worked on many projects involving metabolomics analysis of Human Embryonic (hES) and Induced Pluripotent Stem (IPS) cells based assays for drug toxicity screening, autism biomarker detection using blood samples and cancer drug effi cacy testing using orthotropic mouse models of GBM.

Mass Spectrometry, Machine learning, bioinformatics , database , biomarkers

My current research focuses on combining metabolomics, a new and exciting post genomic technology with the power of bioinformatics tools for studying perturbations in metabolism caused due to changes in diet and/or the disease state. In one of our projects, we are investigating the change in the metabolomic patterns produced due to introduction of neutraceuticals in non-small cell lung carcinoma model. The NMR spectral data is subjected to Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to evaluate Biomarkers for early diagnosis of lung cancer. In another project, we are utilizing the metabolomics approach to observe alterations in metabolomics patterns in NMR spectra of biofluids (urine/plasma) from a spontaneous diabetes model. The change in metabolomic pattern or the biomarker profile will enable targeting of specific metabolic pathways affected by the disease condition, leading to mechanistic insight.

George G Chen is a professor in the Department of Surgery, Director of Surgical Research Laboratories, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. He is also served as a principle investigator at the Hong Kong Cancer Institute. He has extensive experience in cancer research, particularly in the area of apoptosis in hepatocellular carcinoma, lung caner and thyroid cancer. He has authored or co-authored ~120 papers and has written a number of books or book chapters. He is currently a member of editorial boards or a guest editor of a number of scientific journals and a regular peer-reviewer for several grant agents. He was educated in China and United Kingdom and has MB and PhD degrees.

Metabolomics

Professor Alexander A. Kamnev is a Leading Scientist at the Institute of Biochemistry and Physiology of Plants and Microorganisms, Russian Academy of Sciences (Saratov, Russia). He received his Cand. Sci. (PhD equivalent; 1992) and DSc (2002) in physical chemistry from Saratov State University. Since mid-90s, his research has been focused on the application of various spectroscopic techniques in studying biomolecules, biocomplexes, supramolecular structures and microbial cells. Professor Kamnev is the main author of more than 100 papers in reputed international journals and several invited review chapters, serves as an editorial board member of a few international scientific journals and is involved in editorial and reviewing activities for a number of international specialized journals in the fields of chemistry and biology.

Zeeshan Ahmed works at the University of Wuerzburg with a strong interest in scientific software solution design and development. He is Post Doc. and Scientific Software Engineer and in the central computation support project of the collaborative research center SFB 1047 at the Biocenter, Department of Neurobiology and Genetics. He did Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from the University of Wuerzburg Germany in collaboration with Technical University of Munich Germany. Furthermore, he is also the alumni (pre. Doctoral research and degree course work) of Vienna University of Technology Austria, Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering Germany and Blekinge Institute of Technology Sweden.

Neurobiology and Genetics

Zuyi (Jacky) Huang completed his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in 2010 and then worked as a Research Scientist in the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine. He joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Villanova University as an Assistant Professor in 2011. He is now the Director of Computational Systems Biology Lab at Villanova University. He has published 18 papers in reputed journals. He is now serving as an editorial board member of Journal of Computer Science & Systems Biology. He is also serving on the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) Policy Committee.

1) deriving quantitative data for transcription factors by analyzing GFP images and solving an inverse problem; 2)integrating available qualitative information into modeling by using Fuzzy logic;3) performing nonlinear model reduction of uncertain systems; 4) sensor network and experimental design for chemical plants.

Dr. Vicki has done MS Analytical Chemistry from University of Nebraska, PhD Analytical Chemistry, Iowa State University, Her research includes characterizing the small molecules in natural systems to understand how they interact synergistically in maintaining the energy balance in mammalian cells. As such, she have collaborated with other experts in the nutritional / biomedical area to link specific dietary metabolites to potential health outcomes. Her experience in dietary metabolites, background in pharmaceuticals, and education as a bioanalytical chemist provides the foundation needed to achieve her long term goals.

Synergistic interactions of secondary metabolites on maintaining the energy balance / fluxes in mammalian cells. Synergistic interactions of secondary metabolites of plant systems on phenotypic switches (e.g. inflammation (M1 to M2 states) and virulent bacteria). Effects of farming practices on secondary metabolites in various crops, with an emphasis on dry edible beans, strawberries, wheat and tomatoes. Development of high-throughput metabolomic analytical methods.