a medical writer based in Mamaroneck, NY.
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Photo courtesy of UCD Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research, Dublin.
I started physics and medicine together and finished my M.D. degree in Geneva, Switzerland. I was a visiting medical student at Duke University and did my internship and residency at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in internal medicine. Then I came back to Geneva as chief resident in internal medicine. In 1983, my boss, the chairman of medicine, said that I should pursue an academic career. At that time I wanted to work on proteins and computer sciences. He said I should work on DNA. I felt that we wouldn't be competitive enough in Geneva to work on DNA at that time, when other people were thinking of sequencing the entire human genome on an industrial scale. I felt that it would be more critical to work on protein separation and using computers to analyze the data, because when the genome would be known, the analysis of its expression would become essential.
I started to work on 2-D gels as a protein separation technique. Then I worked on imaging, using computers to analyze the 2-D gel images. Quite progressively, we got some interesting results, and I was invited to the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a guest researcher where I worked for more than a year.
Then the head of medical computing in Geneva wanted me to do medical computing, which I did for 5 years; however, I wanted to be in the laboratory field. From 1988 to 1993, I was head of medical imaging and still practicing as an internist. During that time we started to develop software for image analysis of 2-D gels, and of CT scans. One of my first Ph.D. students was Ron Appel. I heard of another student, Amos Bairoch, who was building the protein database Swiss-Prot, now UniProt. I realized if I put those two guys together, it would be very powerful. We built a web server, ExPASy (www.expasy.org), the first ever web server for life sciences. In 1996, the Swiss National Fund for Scientific Research no longer wanted to fund us. So, Amos created a cyberspace earthquake, notifying users that ExPASy would shut down. We got a lot of support; and with help from the Geneva University, the Swiss government, and eventually the NIH, ExPASy survived, and we founded the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB). We also founded a biotech software company, Genebio S.A., and some benefits from the company go to SIB. In parallel, we built the biomedical proteomic research group to analyze clinical samples, discover biomarkers, and to do fundamental research. We also founded GeneProt, Inc. in Delaware, USA and Geneva, which was a biotech company that lived for 5 years that analyzed in depth the plasma proteome.
In addition to internal medicine, I also did my board in clinical chemistry because I felt it would be good to be at the intersection of clinical medicine, laboratory medicine, and computer sciences. It's a privilege to go from the bedside to the routine lab, because if there is something missing you can go to the research lab, then go back to the real world and see if it makes sense.
The best advice I have received was my boss saying to work in a narrow domain. It can help you get recognized and get funding. I said I will improve 2-D gels; it is very narrow, and not very trendy. But we started to have the best gel on the planet. Then I was invited to labs, and had to grow in computer sciences to analyze the images. We had to have chromatography then mass spectrometry. We already had practice with protein separation and computer sciences to bridge the virtual world and the real world. That's exactly what I now tell my students: select a narrow domain and be very good in that domain. The other thing is to try to anticipate what will be useful. In the early 1980s when I said I wanted to work with protein separation and computer science, people said, “You're crazy; you should work on DNA. All medicine will be solved by sequencing genomes.” I said, “When the genome is known, you will see that many people will have to move back to proteins.” And that was exactly the case.
What I enjoy most in my work is the multidisciplinarity—we gain a lot by crossing worlds. Outstanding scientists in the past were never blocked by fences between different domains. I've had many professions: physician, scientist, lab researcher, medical computing, and chair of clinical chemistry. But from the beginning, my interests have always been the same: better diagnosis and better treatment for the patient.
