Multiplexed Proteomics Approaches to Study GPCRs
Event Details
- Type
- Monday Lecture Series
- Speaker(s)
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Thomas Sakmar, M.D., Senior Physician and Richard M. and Isabel P. Furlaud Professor and head, Laboratory of Chemical Biology and Signal Transduction, The Rockefeller University
- Speaker bio(s)
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The superfamily of G protein-coupled receptors (GPRCs) comprises approximately 700 seven-transmembrane helical cell surface membrane proteins that bind to diverse ligands and mediate transmembrane signal transduction. Over the past decade we have developed a robust multiplexed suspension bead array technology platform to study GPCR proteomics and biology. The platform can use used to study GPCR “interactomes,” for example to define how GPCRs interact with regulatory membrane proteins such as receptor-activity modifying proteins (RAMPs). In addition, the technology we developed has potential significant clinical applications to develop patient-based diagnostics and therapeutics. For example, an emerging area of medical research has identified autoantibodies against GPCRs that are associated with up to 30 diseases and clinical syndromes, including endocrine, cardiovascular, neurological, autoimmune and post-infectious disorders. We recently used the suspension bead array technology to validate hundreds of synthetic anti-GPCR antibodies and to develop a methodology to identify anti-GPCR antibodies in patient samples, including samples from patients with Long COVID, pre-eclampsia and glaucoma.
Tom Sakmar is the Richard M. and Isabel P. Furlaud Professor at The Rockefeller University where he heads the Laboratory of Chemical Biology and Signal Transduction and is the founding Director of the Human Subjects Protection Program. The work of his group is focused on a super-family of cell-surface receptors called G protein-coupled receptors, which range from visual pigments, which sense light, to chemokine receptors, which are responsible for chemo-selective cell migration. Dr. Sakmar received an A.B. in chemistry from the University of Chicago and an M.D. from Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine. He carried out clinical training at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School before doing postdoctoral research in chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Prof. H. Gobind Khorana. He has been an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a Senior Scholar of the Ellison Medical Foundation, and has also been the Marie Krogh Visiting Professor at University of Copenhagen, and Guest Professor at the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, where he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2021. Dr. Sakmar served as acting president of The Rockefeller University in 2002–2003. Before embarking on a career in academic biomedical research, he worked as an arc welder at the Chrysler Corp. where he welded the number 1 frame crossmember on over one-half of all Dodge Aspen’s produced in 1976 – the car that nearly bankrupted Chrysler. He also worked as a telephone cable splicer at AT&T where he was a member of a small team that installed the world’s first fiberoptic telecommunications system in the Renaissance Center in Detroit. Dr. Sakmar is also the co-author of Passport’s Health Guide for International Travelers, a best-selling trade paperback travel guide first published in 1986.
- Open to
- Campus Only