Bio
Dr. Joshua LaBaer is one of the nation’s foremost investigators in the rapidly expanding field of personalized medicine. Formerly director of the Harvard Institute of Proteomics (HIP), he was recently recruited to ASU’s Biodesign Institute as the first Piper Chair in Personalized Medicine.
Dr. LaBaer’s efforts involve leveraging the Center’s formidable resources for the discovery and validation of biomarkers—unique molecular fingerprints of disease—which can provide early warning for those at risk of major illnesses, including cancer and diabetes. This work is carried out in conjunction with the Partnership for Personalized Medicine, a multi-institution effort that includes the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute in Seattle.
Dr. LaBaer completed his internship and residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a clinical fellowship in Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, both in Boston. He is a board certified physician in Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology and was an Instructor and Clinical Fellow in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He has contributed more than 60 original research publications, reviews and chapters. Dr. LaBaer is an associate editor of the Journal of Proteome Research, Analytical Biochemistry, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards for the Proteome Society, Promega Corporation, Lumera-Plexera Corporation, Barnett Institute, and a founding member of the Human Proteome Organization.
1981 - B.S. University of California, Berkeley, California
1989 - Ph.D. University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco, California (Biochemistry and Biophysics)
1990 - M.D. University of California School of Medicine
Awards and Honors:
1978 Edward Frank Kraft Prize for Outstanding Academic Achievement, University of California
1977-1981 Regents Scholar, University of California
1981 Phi Beta Kappa
1981 Citation for Outstanding Student Research, UC Berkeley
1981 University Medal for Most Distinguished Graduating Senior, UC Berkeley
1981 Graduation with Highest Honors, UC Berkeley
1985 Dean’s Prize for Student Research
1986-1987 Chancellor’s Fellowship
1989 Alpha Omega Alpha
2001-04 Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Foundation Awardee, Breast Cancer Research Foundation
2005- Breast Cancer Research Foundation
2007 Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposium Recipient
Major Research Interests:
1. Finding drug and vaccine targets for biodefense pathogens
2. Disease biomarker discovery
3. Estrogen resistance in breast cancer
4. Protein microarray technology and protein interaction mapping
5. DNA-damage checkpoint regulation
Publications, Original Articles, Reviews, Chapters, and Editorials
LaBaer J, Tsien RY, Fahey KA, DeFranco AL. “Stimulation of the antigen receptor on WEHI-231 B lymphoma cells results in a voltage-independent increase in cytoplasmic calcium.” J Immunol. 1986 Sep 15;137(6):1836-44.
LaBaer J. “Rapid sequencing of miniprep DNA using Sequenase and end-labeled
sequencing primer.” US Biochemicals, (Comments) 15 (1989): 19–20.
Garabedian MJ, LaBaer J, Liu W-H, Thomas J. “Analysis of protein – DNA Interactions.” Gene Transcription - A Practical Approach, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, (1993): 243–295. ISBN 0199632928.
LaBaer J, Yamamoto KR. “Analysis of the DNA-binding affinity, Sequence Specificity and Context Dependence of the Glucocorticoid Receptor Zinc Finger Region.” J Molecular Biology, 239.5 (1994): 664–688.
LaBaer J, Garrett MD, Stevenson LF, Slingerland JM, Sandhu C, Chou HS, Fattaey A, Harlow E. “New functional activities for the p21 family of CDK inhibitors.” Genes Dev. 1997 Apr 1;11(7):847-62.
Hiyama H, Iavarone A, LaBaer J, Reeves SA. “Regulated ectopic expression of cyclin D1 induces transcriptional activation of the cdk inhibitor p21 gene without altering cell cycle progression.” Oncogene. 1997 May 29;14(21):2533-42.
Hu G, Zhang S, Vidal M, LaBaer J, Xu T, Fearon ER. “Mammalian homologs of seven in absentia regulate DCC via the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway.” Genes & Development, 11.20 (1997): 2701–2714.
Brizuela L, Braun P, LaBaer J. “FLEXGene repository: from sequenced genomes to gene repositories for high-throughput functional biology and proteomics.” Mol Biochem Parasitol. 2001 Dec;118(2):155-65.
Braun P, Hu Y, Shen B, Halleck A, Koundinya M, Harlow E, LaBaer J.“Proteome-scale purification of human proteins from bacteria.” Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2002 Mar 5;99(5):2654-9.
Brizuela L, Richardson A, Marsischky G, Labaer J. “The FLEXGene repository: exploiting the fruits of the genome projects by creating a needed resource to face the challenges of the post-genomic era.” Arch Med Res. 2002 Jul-Aug;33(4):318-24
LaBaer J.“Genomics, proteomics, and the new paradigm in biomedical research.” Genet Med. 2002 Nov-Dec;4(6 Suppl):2S-9S.
Hu Y, Hines LM, Weng H, Zuo D, Rivera M, Richardson A, LaBaer J. “Analysis of genomic and proteomic data using advanced literature mining.”
J Proteome Res. 2003 Jul-Aug;2(4):405-12.
Braun P, LaBaer J. “High throughput protein production for functional proteomics.”
Trends Biotechnol. 2003 Sep;21(9):383-8.
LaBaer J. “Mining the literature and large datasets.” Nat Biotechnol. 2003 Sep;21(9):9767.
Pearlberg J, LaBaer J. “Protein expression clone repositories for functional proteomics.” Curr Opin Chem Biol. 2004 Feb;8(1):98-102.
Seton-Rogers SE, Lu Y, Hines LM, Koundinya M, LaBaer J, Muthuswamy SK, Brugge JS. “Cooperation of the ErbB2 receptor and transforming growth factor beta in induction of migration and invasion in mammary epithelial cells.” Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2004 Feb 3;101(5):1257-62. Epub 2004 Jan 22.
Ramachandran N, Hainsworth E, Bhullar B, Eisenstein S, Rosen B, Lau AY, Walter JC, LaBaer J.“Self-assembling protein microarrays.”
Science. 2004 Jul 2;305(5680):86-90.
Murthy TV, Wu W, Qiu QQ, Shi Z, LaBaer J, Brizuela L. “Bacterial cell-free system for high-throughput protein expression and a comparative analysis of Escherichia coli cell-free and whole cell expression systems.”
Protein Expr Purif. 2004 Aug;36(2):217-25.
Hu Y, Labaer J. “Tracking gene-disease relationships for high-throughput functional studies.” Surgery. 2004 Sep;136(3):504-10. ISSN 0039-6060.
Nakamura K, Aebersold R, Bairoch A, Dunn M, Celis J, Hanash S, Hochstrasser D, Humphrey-Smith I, James P, Klose J, LaBaer J, Langen H, Mann M, Parekh R, Patterson S, Pearce C, Poepstorff P, Simpson RJ, Tomlinson I, Tsugita A, Yates J.“From genome to proteome--aim of human proteomics” Seikagaku. 2004 Oct;76(10):1271-4.
Marsischky G, LaBaer J. “Many paths to many clones: a comparative look at high-throughput cloning methods.” Genome Res. 2004 Oct;14(10B):2020-8.
Aguiar JC, LaBaer J, Blair PL, Shamailova VY, Koundinya M, Russell JA, Huang F, Mar W, Anthony RM, Witney A, Caruana SR, Brizuela L, Sacci JB Jr, Hoffman SL, Carucci DJ. “High-throughput generation of P. falciparum functional molecules by recombinational cloning.” Genome Res. 2004 Oct;14(10B):2076-82.
Labaer J, Qiu Q, Anumanthan A, Mar W, Zuo D, Murthy TV, Taycher H, Halleck A, Hainsworth E, Lory S, Brizuela L. “The Pseudomonas aeruginosa PA01 gene collection.” Genome Res. 2004 Oct;14(10B):2190-200.
Pearlberg J, Degot S, Endege W, Park J, Davies J, Gelfand E, Sawyer J, Conery A, Doench J, Li W, Gonzalez L, Boyce FM, Brizuela L, Labaer J, Grueneberg D, Harlow E.“Screens using RNAi and cDNA expression as surrogates for genetics in mammalian tissue culture cells.” Cold Spring Harb Symp Quant Biol. 2005;70:449-59.
LaBaer J, Ramachandran N. “Protein microarrays as tools for functional proteomics.”Curr Opin Chem Biol. 2005 Feb;9(1):14-9.
Fan M, Tsai J, Chen B, Fan K, LaBaer J. “A central repository for published plasmids.” Science. 2005 Mar 25;307(5717):1877.
Chang CY, LaBaer J. “DNA polymorphism detector: an automated tool that searches for allelic matches in public databases for discrepancies found in clone or cDNA sequences.” Bioinformatics. 2005 May 1;21(9):2133-5. Epub 2005 Feb 2.
Collins NL, Reginato MJ, Paulus JK, Sgroi DC, Labaer J, Brugge JS.
“G1/S cell cycle arrest provides anoikis resistance through Erk-mediated Bim suppression.” Mol Cell Biol. 2005 Jun;25(12):5282-91.
Park J, Hu Y, Murthy TV, Vannberg F, Shen B, Rolfs A, Hutti JE, Cantley LC, Labaer J, Harlow E, Brizuela L. “Building a human kinase gene repository: bioinformatics, molecular cloning, and functional validation.” Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005 Jun 7;102(23):8114-9. Epub 2005 May 31.
LaBaer J. “So, you want to look for biomarkers (introduction to the special biomarkers issue).” J Proteome Res. 2005 Jul-Aug;4(4):1053-9.
Anderson KS, LaBaer J. “The sentinel within: exploiting the immune system for cancer biomarkers.” J Proteome Res. 2005 Jul-Aug;4(4):1123-33.
Ramachandran N, Larson DN, Stark PR, Hainsworth E, LaBaer J. “Emerging tools for real-time label-free detection of interactions on functional protein microarrays.” FEBS J. 2005 Nov;272(21):5412-25.
Komaroff AL, Labaer J.“Health for life. Genomic medicine: the science speeds up.”
Newsweek. 2005 Dec 12;146(24):57.
Ramachandran N, Hainsworth E, Demirkan G, LaBaer J.“On-chip protein synthesis for making microarrays.” Methods Mol Biol. 2006;328:1-14.
Braun P, LaBaer J. “High Throughput Purification of Proteins from Escherichia Coli.” Cell Biology: A Laboratory Handbook, 3rd Edition, Volume 4. Elsevier Academic Press: Burlington, MA (2006): 73- 77.
Butcher RA, Bhullar BS, Perlstein EO, Marsischky G, LaBaer J, Schreiber SL.
“Microarray-based method for monitoring yeast overexpression strains reveals small-molecule targets in TOR pathway.” Nat Chem Biol. 2006 Feb;2(2):103-9. Epub 2006 Jan 15.
Witt AE, Hines LM, Collins NL, Hu Y, Gunawardane RN, Moreira D, Raphael J, Jepson D, Koundinya M, Rolfs A, Taron B, Isakoff SJ, Brugge JS, LaBaer J. “Functional proteomics approach to investigate the biological activities of cDNAs implicated in breast cancer.” J Proteome Res. 2006 Mar;5(3):599-610.
Park J, Labaer J. “Recombinational cloning.” Curr Protoc Mol Biol. 2006 May;Chapter 3:Unit 3.20.
Cooper AA, Gitler AD, Cashikar A, Haynes CM, Hill KJ, Bhullar B, Liu K, Xu K, Strathearn KE, Liu F, Cao S, Caldwell KA, Caldwell GA, Marsischky G, Kolodner RD, Labaer J, Rochet JC, Bonini NM, Lindquist S. “Alpha-synuclein blocks ER-Golgi traffic and Rab1 rescues neuron loss in Parkinson's models.” Science. 2006 Jul 21;313(5785):324-8. Epub 2006 Jun 22.
Haab BB, Paulovich AG, Anderson NL, Clark AM, Downing GJ, Hermjakob H, Labaer J, Uhlen M. “A reagent resource to identify proteins and peptides of interest for the cancer community: a workshop report.”Mol Cell Proteomics. 2006 Oct;5(10):1996-2007. Epub 2006 Jul 24.
Chatterjee DK, LaBaer J. “Protein Technologies.” Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 17 (August 2006): 334-336.
Zuo D, Mohr SE, Hu Y, Taycher E, Rolfs A, Kramer J, Williamson J, LaBaer J.
“PlasmID: a centralized repository for plasmid clone information and distribution.”
Nucleic Acids Res. 2007 Jan;35(Database issue):D680-4. Epub 2006 Nov 28.
Hu Y, Rolfs A, Bhullar B, Murthy TV, Zhu C, Berger MF, Camargo AA, KelleyF, McCarron S, Jepson D, Richardson A, Raphael J, Moreira D, Taycher E, Zuo D, Mohr S, Kane MF, Williamson J, Simpson A, Bulyk ML, Harlow E, Marsischky G, Kolodner RD, LaBaer J. “Approaching a complete repository of sequence-verified protein-encoding clones for Saccharomyces cerevisiae.” Genome Res. 2007 Apr;17(4):536-43. Epub 2007 Feb 23.
Taycher E, Rolfs A, Hu Y, Zuo D,Mohr SE, Williamson J, LaBaer J. “A novel approach to sequence validating protein expression clones with automated decision making.” BMC Bioinformatics. 2007 Jun 13;8:198.
Murthy T, Rolfs A, Hu Y, Shi Z, Raphael J, Moreira D, Kelley F, McCarron S, Jepson D, Taycher E, Zuo D, Mohr S E, Fernandez M, Brizuela L, LaBaer J, “A full-genomic sequence-verified protein-coding gene collection for Francisella tularensis.” PLoS ONE 2007;2:e577
Langlais C, Guilleaume B, Wermke N, Scheuermann T, Ebert L, LaBaer J, Korn B. “A systematic approach for testing expression of human full-length proteins in cell-free expression systems.” BMC Biotechnol. 2007 Oct 3;7:64.
Xu L, Zhu J, Hu X, Zhu H, Kim HT, LaBaer J, Goldberg A, Yuan J. “c-IAP1 cooperates with Myc by acting as a ubiquitin ligase for Mad1.” Mol Cell. 2007 Dec 14;28(5):914-22.
Slagowski NL, Kramer RW, Morrison MF, LaBaer J, Lesser CF. “A functional genomic yeast screen to identify pathogenic bacterial proteins.” PLoS Pathog. 2008 Jan;4(1):e9.
Rolfs A, Hu Y, Ebert L, Hoffmann D, Zuo D, Ramachandran N, Raphael J, Kelley F, McCarron S, Jepson DA, Shen B, Baqui MM, Pearlberg J, Taycher E, DeLoughery C, Hoerlein A, Korn B, LaBaer J. “A biomedically enriched collection of 7000 human ORF clones.” PLoS ONE. 2008 Jan 30;3(1):e1528.
Rolfs A, Montor WR, Yoon SS, Hu Y, Bhullar B, Kelley F, McCarron S, Jepson DA, Shen B, Taycher E, Mohr SE, Zuo D, Williamson J, Mekalanos J, Labaer J. “Production and sequence validation of a complete full length ORF collection for the pathogenic bacterium Vibrio cholerae.” Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 Mar 18;105(11):4364-9. Epub 2008 Mar 12.
Anderson KS, Ramachandran N, Wong J, Raphael JV, Hainsworth E, Demirkan G, Cramer D, Aronzon D, Hodi FS, Harris L, Logvinenko T, LaBaer J. “Application of protein microarrays for multiplexed detection of antibodies to tumor antigens in breast cancer.” J Proteome Res. 2008 Apr;7(4):1490-9. Epub 2008 Feb 27.
Hughes SR, Dowd PF, Hector RE, Panavas T, Sterner DE, Qureshi N, Bischoff KM, Bang SS, Mertens JA, Johnson ET, Li XL, Jackson JS, Caughey RJ, Riedmuller SB, Bartolett S, Liu S, Rich JO, Farrelly PJ, Butt TR, Labaer J, Cotta MA. Lycotoxin-1 insecticidal peptide optimized by amino acid scanning mutagenesis and expressed as a coproduct in an ethanologenic Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain. J Pept Sci. 2008 May 9.
Ramachandran N, Raphael JV, Hainsworth E, Demirkan G, Fuentes MG, Rolfs A, Hu Y, Labaer J. “Next-generation high-density self-assembling functional protein arrays.” Nat Methods. 2008 May 11.
Ramachandran N, Srivastava S, Labaer J. “Applications of protein microarrays for biomarker discovery” Proteomics Clin. Appl. 2008 Oct; 2 (10/11): 1444-1459
Ramachandran N, Anderson KS, Raphael JV, Hainsworth E, Sibani S, Montor WR, Pacek M, Wong J, Elianne M, Sanda MG, Hu Y, Lovinenko T, Labaer J. “Tracking humoral responses using self assembling protein microarrays” Proteomics Clin. Appl. 2008 Oct; 2 (10/11): 1518-1527.
Berman, H.M., Westbrook, J.D., Gabanyi, M.J., Tao, Y., Shah, R., Kouranov, A., Schwede, T., Arnold, K., Kiefer, F., Bordoli, L., Kopp, J., Podvinec, M., Adams, P.D., Carter, L.G., Minor, W., Nair, R., LaBaer, J. “The Protein Structure Initiative Structural Genomics Knowledgebase.” Nucl. Acid Res. 2008 November 14
Hughes SR, Sterner DE, Bischoff KM, Hector RE, Dowd PF, Qureshi N, Bang SS, Grynaviski N, Chakrabarty T, Johnson ET, Dien BS, Mertens JA, Caughey RJ, Liu S, Butt TR, LaBaer J, Cotta MA, Rich JO. “Engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain for improved xylose utilization with a three-plasmid SUMO yeast expression system.” Plasmid. 2009 Jan;61(1):22-38. Epub 2008 Oct 26. PMID: 18831987
Srivastava S, LaBaer J. “Nanotubes light up protein arrays.” Nat Biotechnol. 2008 Nov;26(11):1244-6. PMID: 18997763
Murphy RF, Labaer J. “Locations Everyone: Lights, Camera, Action!” J Proteome Res. 2008 Dec 5. PMID: 19055481
Cong Zhu, Kelsey Byers1, Rachel Patton McCord, Zhenwei Shi, Michael F. Berger, Daniel Newburger, Katrina Saulrieta, Zachary Smith, Mita Shah, Mathangi Radhakrishnan, Anthony A. Philippakis, Yanhui Hu, Federico De Masi, Marcin Pacek, Andreas Rolfs, TVS Murthy, Joshua LaBaer, Martha L. Bulyk “High-Resolution DNA Binding Specificity Analysis of Yeast Transcription Factors.” Genome Research. 2009 (in press)
