Dr. Gary Paterno

The Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) has awarded $531,988 to Memorial researchers for a QStar tandem mass spectrometer for the analysis of molecular structures and interactions. This machine will profoundly enhance the research capabilities of Memorial University's researchers to perform innovative research, which will impact the health, welfare, economic development and quality of life of Canadians and the global population.

Dr. Gary Paterno, Terry Fox Cancer Laboratories, is named as the principal investigator but he said the grant application was done in partnership with Dr. Robert Gendron, Basic Medical Sciences.

“This grant would not have been successful without the cooperation and input of researchers form across the university including Basic Medical Sciences, clinical medicine, chemistry, biochemistry, biology and the Ocean Sciences Centre. A significant amount of the equipment which is needed to feed into the mass spectrometer is in place thanks to the CFI New Opportunities grant to Drs. Robert Gendron, Jules Doré, Hélène Paradis and Daniel MacPhee in a previous competition.”

The mass spectrometer will have its own room in the C-CART (Centre for Chemical Analysis, Research and Training) core facility in the chemistry building. “It is the last piece of the puzzle which will enable us to have a state-of-the-art core facility for molecular analysis and proteomics at Memorial,” said Dr. Paterno. “This machine, and others, can by operated, the data acquired and then analyzed by a work station that that is already operating in the Faculty of Medicine.

The tandem mass spectrometer is an instrument that is used in many diverse research fields to identify and characterize molecules with exquisite accuracy and from small amounts of material. This field is now beginning to exploit the tremendous advances and information in the area of genomics, including the complete DNA sequence of humans and many other organisms to address many problems in biology, biochemistry, health and disease.