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Clinical Chemistry 56: 154-160, 2010. First published November 5, 2009; 10.1373/clinchem.2009.126680
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(Clinical Chemistry. 2010;56:154-160.)
© 2010 American Association for Clinical Chemistry, Inc.

Reflection

Adventures in Clinical Chemistry and Proteomics: A Personal Account

Norman G. Anderson1

1 Viral Defense Foundation, Holland Laboratory, Rockville, MD.

Address correspondence to the author at: Viral Defense Foundation, Holland Laboratory, 15601 Crabbs Branch Way, Rockville, MD 20852. E-mail normananderson@viraldefense.org.

The first 300 words of the full text of this article appear below.

My 90 years have witnessed a basic transformation in the understanding of disease in terms of molecules, largely through the application of new instruments and technologies. The ultimate distillation of what really works at this level—the quantitative measurements that generate clinical insight from specimens like blood—is clinical chemistry. This field has fascinated me for a long time, partly because of my interest in inventing or improving analytical instruments, and partly as an anchor to real-world biology that is frequently missing in academic research. A second thread of interest to me is how successful research gets done, and how to know when a solitary inventor is needed and when it takes an army. Here I recount some personal experiences relevant to these interests, ranging across several fields and in organizations of widely varying scale, all ultimately linked to clinical chemistry and the human proteome.


Once Upon a Time a Long Time Ago ...

Interdisciplinary R&D has always fascinated me, and my introduction to it occurred in unusual times, during World War II. I was on active duty in the US Navy before Pearl Harbor as a Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class, and was discharged at the war’s end as a Lieutenant (jg) line officer, with zero instruction in between on how to be a naval officer. Despite (or because of) this fortuitous absence of formal tuition, I found that much of the fun and adventure in life lies in the cracks between disciplines, and that these cracks can be wider in large organizations (like a Navy in wartime) than smaller ones.

Flying in blimps off the Carolina coast during the height of antisubmarine warfare, it occurred to me that maybe, lacking a bombsight, we couldn’t actually sink a German submarine if we found it. After developing proper instrumentation, I found experimentally this was largely true, and a proper bombsight was developed. . . . [Full Text of this Article]


The Molecular Anatomy Program


The Joint NIH-AEC Zonal Centrifuge Project


The Centrifugal Fast Analyzer (GeMSAEC)


Large Scale Biology Corp


The Promise of Proteomics for Clinical Chemistry Today