Post-translational modification enrichment and quantitation for precision medicine and drug development

Connie Jimenez is a biologist and proteome researcher who pioneered single cell neuropeptide profiling by mass spectrometry in the 1990s during her Ph.D. studies at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. She then performed post-doctoral neuroproteomics research at the University of California-San Francisco and Vrije Universiteit.
In 2006, Dr. Jimenez founded the OncoProteomics Laboratory at Cancer Center Amsterdam to employ the power of mass spectrometry-based proteomics to study cancer (www.oncoproteomics.nl). Her lab's mission is to apply innovative mass spectrometry-based phosphoproteomics and data analysis to improve early diagnosis and treatment of cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. Label-free proteomics and dedicated data analysis strategies are employed to investigate extracellular proteins in in vitro and in vivo proximal fluids (urine, CSF, stool) to develop non-invasive biomarker applications, and intracellular phosphoproteins to enable patient stratification and response prediction. These approaches have been successfully applied in multiple collaborative projects in various cancers including colorectal, breast, lung, prostate, and pancreatic cancer, leukemia, and neurodegenerative diseases.
Dr. Jimenez has authored over 140 peer-reviewed articles, 11 book chapters, and 8 articles in popular science and clinical journals. She is active in several international proteomics networks: founder and member of the Steering Committee of the Netherlands Proteomics Platform, general council member of the European Proteomics Association, co-chair of the Cancer Initiative of the Human Proteome Organization. Dr. Jimenez serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Proteomics, Molecular and Cellular Proteomics, Proteomics, and Clinical Proteomics.

Manuel Tzouros has served as proteomics project leader at the Roche Innovation Center in Basel, Switzerland since 2011. Dr. Tzouros' primary responsibility is providing cutting-edge, mass spectrometry-based, proteomics support to collaborators originating from an array of disease areas including oncology, neuroscience, rare diseases, immunology, infectious diseases, and ophthalmology. His projects typically span early drug development phases, although clinical applications are increasing. Dr. Tzouros' major area of expertise encompasses the quantification of post-translational modifications, such as phosphorylation and ubiquitylation, which can be implicated in disease. This serves to address important questions related to target biology, drug effect, mode of action, and safety, as well as biomarker discovery. Prior to his current work at Roche, Dr. Tzouros performed post-doctoral research at Utrecht University in The Netherlands and at Roche in Basel, Switzerland.