PROTEOBIO at CIT

2004

YEAR BOOK

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Cork Institute of Technology

Kevin J. James

PROTEOBIO at CIT

Dr Ambrose Furey, Lecturer in Chemistry/Manager of PROTEOBIO, operating a QqTOF mass spectrometer

PROTEOBIO is the mass spectrometry research centre located in the Department of Chemistry, CIT. It comprises a five-laboratory complex and is the largest Liquid Chromatography � Mass Spectrometry (LC�MS) facility in Ireland. PROTEOBIO is at the forefront of food borne biotoxin research in Europe. The unit has a unique position within Europe as the holder of the reference toxin standards and analytical protocols for determining a variety of biotoxins. It has provided analytical services to the Irish Department of the Marine, and has also been engaged to offer advice and consultancy on biotoxins to governmental agencies in New Zealand, Spain, France, Norway, UK and Italy, as well as to the EU Commission. Many of the Centre's recently developed LC-MS/MS methods for toxin determination have been submitted to the WHO with a view to being incorporated into EU regulatory requirements. In 2000, the Research Centre hosted a workshop on LC-MS and biotoxin analysis supported and funded by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Oceanographic Commission (IOC); scientists and regulators from all over the world attended the workshop.

Funding to support the research conducted at PROTEOBIO has come from a number of sources including: the Higher Education Authority (PRTLI-II), Enterprise Ireland, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Dr Kevin J. James is the Research Director and the Research Manager is Dr Ambrose Furey. Dr James established the Research Centre in 1991: since then 16 PhD programs have been successfully completed. PROTEOBIO currently has 10 PhD students and has three postdoctoral researchers, and is currently recruiting an additional three PhD students and three postdoctoral researchers. In addition, PROTEOBIO has played host to many international scientists from Australia, Chile, Japan, Norway, USA, New Zealand, Spain, Portugal and France, who have come to conduct research availing of the state-of-the-art facilities and expertise available.

The Research Centre has to date published in excess of 80 peer-reviewed articles in a range of international journals including: Journal of Chromatography, Journal of Mass Spectrometry, Chemosphere, Toxicon, and Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry. Dr James and Dr Furey have been invited to many prestigious conferences as guest lecturers and have also been invited to speak on the applications of LC-MS methodologies to biotoxins and for protein sequencing at many academic institutes including: Cornell University, NY; University of Miami, FL; University of Vigo and the University of Oviedo, Spain. Dr Kevin James has chaired a prestigious Gordon research conference and has been invited to act as an expert referee for several international peer-reviewed publications.

The Centre is currently undergoing expansion and, by the end of 2004, PROTEOBIO will have 21 researchers, including six post-doctoral researchers.

Contact: Dr Kevin J. James, Director of PROTEOBIO;
Tel: + 353 21 4 326701; E-mail: [email protected]