Advances in Chemical Proteomics

Xudong Yao obtained his B.S. in synthetic polymer materials in July 1984 and M.S. in polymer chemistry in July 1987, both from Nanjing University in China. After working with the Department of Fiber Materials at China Textile University (now Donghua University) in Shanghai, he moved to the University of Maryland Baltimore County in the United States for doctoral studies in mechanistic enzymology with Prof. Ralph M. Pollack from August 1995 to October 1999. He then waded into the beginning streams of proteomics and did postdoctoral research in mass spectrometry and proteomics with Prof. Catherine Fenselau in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Maryland until March 2002. During that time, he co-invented a highly cited quantitative proteomics technology of enzymatic 18O-labeling. Recruited by GeneProt, he flew to Geneva to join an ahead-of-its-time venture on proteomics industrialization. In October 2002, he joined Millennium Pharmaceuticals in Boston, continuing his industrial exploration in the uncharted land of Antibody-drug conjugates using mass spectrometry. He resumed his academic pursuit in August 2004, joining the Department of Chemistry at the University of Connecticut where he currently is an associate professor. His research activities are centered on the development and application of novel mass spectrometry and omics technologies.

1. Tool compounds for mass spectrometry-based chemical proteomics 2. Principles of proteomic reactions of covalent inhibitors 3. Reporter tags and chemistry for probe-reacted proteins 4. Chemical derivatization of peptides for quantitative proteomics 5. Database-searching strategies for probe-reacted proteins in a proteome 6. Solid-phase reagents for discovering inhibitors of kinases 7. Fragment screening for discovering covalent probes 8. Designer compounds for locational proteomics 9. Chemical proteomics for exploring protein lipidation Targeting Author: Edward Tate 10. Synthetic evolution of indocyanine green with the 2-nitroimidazole warhead for imaging of hypoxic tumor