The Orsburn Lab
Previously at the Johns Hopkins University
(New location announced soon!)
Hard work is paying off. Recent proof in 2024!
-
Ben was named the winner of BioAnalysis Outstanding Contributor Award for 2023 (Obviously due to his great team!)
-
Ben was included in the "Rising Stars of Proteomics and Metabolomics" by ACS Journal of Proteome Research!
-
Check out Colten's newest paper in ACS Pharmacology!
-
Welcome to the future of single cell research where you can have it all. Simultaneous single cell proteomics and epigenetics? Or pharmacology and proteomics data extraction from 1 cell?
-
2023
-
We got the cover of the Journal of Proteome Research with "A Tale of Two Cells" uncovered using single cell proteomics!
-
Colten Eberhard was awarded an ASPET travel award to present at WCP2023 conference in Scotland!
-
We didn't have the software we needed to do single protein analysis in single cell proteomics data. It took a while, but Ahmed wrote it. Check out SCP Viz here. You can run it online following the links in the abstract!
-
Want to double the signal for peptides below one nanogram in concentration (like normal sized single cells). Question everything. Including your LCMS buffers. We doubled our signal just by changing an acidifier.
-
Abigail's work identifying ultralow copy number proteins that shouldn't be in the brain....in specific brain cell types...just published! as well as a review she led on applying single cell technologies.
-
You can read about our methods in Nature Comms here
-
-
5954.01 WAS RENEWED UNTIL 2024! 5954.01 is the first high resolution LCMS assay to meet ISO 17025 chemical measurement guidelines and receive US DOH approval. This is a big deal because high resolution LCMS has lower false positives than traditional LCMS. Lower false positives = faster turn-around and lower costs for clinicians and patients.
Research
The Orsburn Lab specializes in the application of mass spectrometry to solve unconventional challenges in human health and pharmacology. Our research ranges from the analysis of post-translationally modified proteins through products of drug metabolism, with many stops in between.
The effective application of modern mass spectrometry requires collaborative interfaces with clinicians and biologists. These collaborations are essential so we can focus on method development at the bench, in the vacuum chambers and developing the new software to pull it all together. Whenever possible we make all of our data publicly available to the global community in the most accessible ways we can.
Here are some of our current projects.
Applying single cell proteomics to understand resistance to chemotherapies
Just accepted in Nature Communications!
Cancer recurrence can begin with a single cell that has survived a chemotherapy regimen.
We specialize in the application of single cell proteomics (SCP) by mass spectrometry to better understand the response of individual cells to drugs.
We first study the phenotypic responses of cells treated with drugs with proteomics of thousands of homogenized cells. Once responses are identified, we use single cell proteomics to understand the level of heterogeneity that exists in this response at a cellular level. Our first study was just accepted in Nature Communications.
This isn't all, you can see why we're using Time of Flight Technology here.
Leveraging scalable computing to obtain unprecedented coverage of the human proteome
LCMS based proteomics typically relies on desktop computing architecture. While these workflows allow us to identify most human protein groups, they do not allow us to understand the actual proteoforms of interest. By leveraging scalable Cloud based platforms we can study proteomics in a true biological context. Using this approach we can identify human mutations without the need for expensive genomics input. Our recent work has simplified cancer neo-antigen discovery and resulted in the most comprehensive proteome of human tumors ever assembled.
Modernizing clinical assays with mass spectrometry
Many assays used for patient diagnostics have not changed in any meaningful way in decades. We have identified both metabolic and proteomic assays of low sensitivity or specificity. We were recently awarded our first collaborative grant to replace a historic neonatal assay requiring multiple blood draws with something better, faster, and less invasive for children.
Want to collaborate?
725 N. Wolfe Street Baltimore, MD
Biophysics 304/B11-B11A
Physiology 312
b-orsbur-1-@jhmi.edu (remove the dashes)
