INTRODUCTION

Apple in Education: Researching the heart of the matter

Heart disease is the major cause of death in the industrialised world. The British Heart Foundation Centre of Excellence at King’s College London is at the forefront of proteomics research – vital to understanding cardiovascular diseases and developing better treatments. Apple technology promises the Centre a fast flowing proteomics data pipeline, easy for clinicians and biologists to search, access, visualise and share.

“Proteomics is an exciting new field of research, but it needs high performance computing to generate data effectively”, says Dr Manuel Mayr, leading the proteomics research team. “The Apple solution gives all our experts cutting-edge analysis and data delivery”.

The King's British Heart Foundation (BHF) Centre of Research Excellence was established in 2008 to promote leadership in cardiovascular research and training. It brings together a unique range of internationally renowned scientists and clinicians, focusing on advancing early diagnosis, prevention and treatment of heart diseases.

Although mortality rates for cardiovascular diseases have fallen by half over the past 30 years in the US and many parts of Europe, approximately one million people a year still require treatment following acute and chronic heart ‘events’. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that rising life expectancy, coupled with trends in risk factors such as obesity and type II diabetes, could lead to a doubling in the incidence of cardiovascular diseases by 2050.

One of the most exciting new techniques for examining the processes and structures of heart diseases is proteomics: the large-scale analysis of proteins. Proteomics is used with other molecular profiling technologies to provide the biological information for developing new classes of drugs.

The King’s BHF Centre of Excellence has an international reputation for cardiovascular proteomics. Dr Manuel Mayr heads the proteomics group, providing analysed data to other biomedical research projects designed to meet the clinical challenges posed by heart diseases.

“Our proteomics group is unusual because we are a team of clinician scientists, biologists, and chemists rather than mass spectrometrists. So we are not operating machines in a core-facility, but we are running our own research programme in addition to being very well integrated with other cardiovascular clinicians and specialist scientists at the Centre. This creates synergies that advance our research into heart disease”, explains Dr Mayr.

“Proteomics is a very powerful tool and it is most effective where the data can be used quickly and interactively with the user projects. The Centre is an ideal environment for applied proteomics research. We also collaborate extensively with peer researchers across Europe”.

A key factor in the success of the proteomics group is technology support. The group has state-of-the art proteomic mass spectrometer analysis equipment, but it faced serious problems in managing the amount of data to be analysed.