Kevin Xu

Education:

• Graduate Student Medical Pharmacology University of Arizona 2008-Present
• B.S. Biochemistry/Neuroscience University of California, Los Angeles 2007

Achievements:

Professional Experience:

• Instructor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology/Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Arizona 2010
• Graduate Research Assistant, Department of Pharmacology, College of Medicine, University of Arizona 2008-2009
• Undergraduate Teaching Assistant, UCLA 2007
• Undergraduate Research Assistant, UCLA 2006-2007

Research Project:

I am working on an asthma project using proteomics methodologies under the supervision of Drs. Halonen and Lau. This project is intended to identify and validate biomarkers in plasma samples from human subjects for asthma and/or protection from asthma afforded by household dogs presence at birth. At the current stage the hypothesis of the project is that the dog-exposure in early childhood alters the proteomic profiles of human plasma. The two approaches we've been using are Q-ToF and antibody array. As a cutting-edge technology, Q-ToF enables us to do "label free"quantitative proteomic analysis in a highly reproducible manner with establishment of internal standard using bacterial mutant cytochrome C (T33V). This approach is suitable to profile the high-abundance proteins (HAP) and moderate-abundance proteins (MAP). In addition, the antibody array technology allows us to investigate simultaneously 507 low-abundance proteins (LAP), which mostly are cytokines, growth factors, adhesion molecules, etc, to complenmentarily cover the range that Q-ToF does not cover. It is hoped that the mechanism(s) of asthma development may be dissected by using proteomic technologies and ultimately the wealth of information generated by proteomic and statistical techniques will lead us to a more comprehensive assessment of potential biomarkers for both asthma risk and prevention.

Publications:

• Jimenez-Andrade JM, Mantyh WG, Bloom AP, Xu H, Ferng AS, Dussor G, Vanderah TW, Mantyh PW. A phenotypically restricted set of primary afferent nerve fibers innervate the bone versus skin: therapeutic opportunity for treating skeletal pain. Bone. 46(2): 306-13, 2010.

Abstracts:

• Asthma biomarker discovery in human plasma using label free quantitative analysis with an Internal Standard. Radabaugh, T., Xu, H., Tsaprailis, G., Lu, Z., Liu, J., Billheimer, D., Vercelli, D., Halonen, M., and Lau, S.S. J. Am. Soc. Mass. Spec., WP35, 657, 2011.

Past and present staff

Present Graduate Students

Ryan Canatsey | Owen Kinsky | Chris Kuhlman | Nick Mastrandrea | Jessica Sapiro | Kevin Xu

Present Postdoctoral Fellow
Tim Radabaugh

Research Associate

Alfred Gallegos

Clinical Faculty Mentee

Hussein Yassine

Current Undergraduate Students

Wesley Cai, Itzel Rojas, Audrey Shi, Kim Tham

Recent Past Staff
Martina Bowen | Jennifer Cohen | Ashley Fisher | Chris Hattan | Mike Kimzey | Matt Labenski | Jean Lord-Garcia