2006 UAB Botanicals Workshop

Purdue University and the University of Alabama at Birmingham Botanicals Center for Age-Related Disease

September 11-12, 2006
263 Bevill Research Building
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Birmingham, AL 35294

Dear Workshop participants,

We welcome our colleagues from other Botanicals Centers and from the UAB community to the 2006 Purdue-UAB Botanicals Center Annual Workshop. For the visitors, we’re glad you’ve come to Birmingham. We’re proud of our city (http://www.informationbirmingham.com/) , our University (https://www.uab.edu) and of the UAB research environment that facilitates our botanicals research. We hope your visit is a safe and good one.

The use of botanicals and dietary supplements by the American public continues to be widespread, representing a multi-billion dollar industry. Research on the potential health benefits and/or toxicities of these preparations has been hampered in many cases by poor experimental design, choice of pre-clinical cell and animal models, failure to use the correct form of the botanicals and inadequate analytical methods. The goal of the first day of the 2006 Botanicals Workshop was to assess these challenges and to provide participants with a framework with which they can conduct reproducible and fundable research studies on botanicals.

In addition to showing that botanicals and dietary supplements prevent the macroscopic aspects of disease (e.g., lower tumor number in a chemoprevention experiment, reduce strokes, prevent cataract disease, etc.), research must consider other physiological and biochemical parameters. These were described by three UAB principal investigators of NIH grants.

It is also important to identify the mechanism(s) and/or protein target(s) of botanicals and dietary supplements. Proteomics and mass spectrometry offer powerful new tools to dissect the mechanisms that underlie the actions of botanicals.

The second day of the workshop focused on emerging techniques in proteomics and mass spectrometry. Quantitatively measuring the >200,000 protein forms in a cell is a huge challenge. The faculty in this part of the workshop discussed the approaches needed to prepare materials for proteomics analysis and the difficulties of working with the huge dynamic range of the proteins. The presenters considered how proteins are modified by chronic disease and the mechanisms by which botanicals modulate these modifications. Finally, the speakers discussed the exciting developments in in situ imaging mass spectrometry that facilitates the examination of proteins in a tissue, and the discoveries many frontline labs are making of this technique.

Stephen Barnes, PhD	Helen Kim, PhD	J. Michael Wyss, PhD
Botanicals Center Co-Director	Director, 2D-Proteomics	Project 2 leader