Science thomsonreuters.com

Kidney stones have tormented people throughout history. In fact scientists have found evidence of kidney stones even in mummified remains of a 7,000-year-old Egyptian. It is still a common disease around the world. Through the study of proteins, we are building a better understanding of the disease and how the stones are formed. My hope is that we will be able to prevent this disease in future.

I received my Medical Degree at Chiang Mai University in 1994 and postgraduate trainings in Clinical Science, Internal Medicine and Nephrology in Thailand from 1995 to 2000. In 2000 I went to the University of Louisville in the US where we started building the proteomics lab. In 2004 I returned to my hometown to build the proteomics lab here at Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University. 

Proteins are the workhorses of our bodies. They are vital parts of living organs and the word proteome, from protein and genome, was first used by Marc Wilkins from Australia in 1994.  Proteomics is the systematic analysis of proteins for their identity, quantity and function in a given cell, tissue or biological system. It is important because we can find certain proteins in a cancerous cell, for example, that may not be present in a healthy cell. These are the unique proteins that can be good targets for new drugs. The realization of this goal is very difficult though. The study is very complicated because the human body contains numerous proteins and while an organism's genome is more or less constant, the proteome differs from cell to cell and from time to time.

I have been able to develop some techniques for proteomic analysis that are unlike conventional methods. Now we can study a very large number of proteins simultaneously. When I started out, only a few people were working on urinary protein analysis because it was so difficult. Urine contains a very low amount of protein but high amounts of salt and different compounds that can interfere with protein analysis. We concentrated on the problem and have been able to isolate hundreds of proteins from human urine. This kind of analytical technique will help with the identification of potential new drugs for the treatment of disease and the finding of specific protein biomarkers to diagnose disease quickly. We are in the initial phase of the study but have identified a large number of biomarker candidates that we now need to validate before they can be used in routine clinical practice. We need to validate all this data, not only in my group, but in other groups around the world.

There is the need for a great deal of collaboration to achieve the great promise of proteomics. I am on the editorial board for several international journals and have just been re-elected as a Council Member of the Human Proteome Organisation (HUPO). We have an annual meeting but also keep in touch using email. I am in charge of creating a set of standards and guidelines for urinary proteomic analysis so we can compare results from the entire network across the world. Closer to home, I work in one of the biggest hospitals in Thailand and that means I have many colleagues who are interested in applying proteomics to their own research such as virus and bacteria research.

I use Web of Knowledge frequently to search for literature and to look at citations of the article and also to look at the Impact Factors for journals. We also use EndNote to organize the references in our papers. I have been using Web of Knowledge since 2000, when I was in the University of Louisville. I have continued to use it in Bangkok. It has travelled with me. It is definitely useful for me to keep in touch with other researchers globally.

Now I am also finding the benefit of using ResearcherID - it is very useful to find networks or to find individual researchers in my field.