PNNL's Richard Smith named to prestigious Scientific American 50 list of outstandi...( Richland Wash. Richard D. Smith Bat...)

Richland, Wash. Richard D. Smith, Battelle Fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has been named one of 50 outstanding leaders in the 2007 Scientific American 50. Each year the magazine recognizes its list of 50 key contributors in science and technology. Smith shared the honor for creating a new approach to neurological diagnostics with a colleague from UCLAs David Geffen School of Medicine, Desmond Smith.

Smiths research may help identify the earliest detectable stages of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other neurological diseases. Smiths findings indicate that many neurodegenerative diseases leave a biochemical calling card, or biomarker, that may be used to predict early stages of brain impairment. The understandings from this research may result in the discovery of drug targets for new theraputic approaches. Many biomedical researchers also believe that detecting disease states before symptoms occur is key to reversing many as-yet-incurable diseases.

Smiths work led to the mapping of proteins in brain tissues. This mapping has allowed scientists to examine the location and abundance of large numbers of proteins within healthy brain tissue, which can be compared to protein portraits found within diseased brain tissues. These differences may help identify neurological diseases at a very early stage and proteins that might be targeted for drug intervention. Its hoped that such diseases might be curbed if caught and treated early enough.

Associate Laboratory Director for Fundamental & Computational Sciences, Doug Ray, said, Dick Smith and his team have pushed the frontiers of proteomics instrumentation far beyond what we imagined just a few years ago. By integrating new ideas into the tools available to conduct research, they have made comprehensive proteomic mapping possible.

This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health and PNNL's Biomolecular Systems Initia
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