Dr. Bart Van Puyvelde

Upon completing my MSc in Pharmaceutical Drug Development with great honors at Ghent University in 2017, I embarked on a PhD at the Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology (LabPhBT), funded by a fundamental research PhD fellowship from the Research Foundation Flanders, FWO. My research focused on the analysis of histone post-translational modifications (hPTMs) using mass spectrometry (MS), and over the course of four years, I worked to optimize sample preparation and data acquisition techniques for a data-independent acquisition (DIA) workflow. As machine learning algorithms began to emerge for predicting peptide behavior in liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS) experiments, I became interested in their potential for hPTM analysis (retention time and fragment ion intensity), especially after having shown the benefit for traditional proteomics workflows. However, the outbreak of the SARSCoV-2 pandemic inspired me to shift my focus to the use of predicted spectral libraries for analyzing non-model organisms. Our research resulted in the development of a clinically relevant assay for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 proteins in patient samples using tandem quadrupole instruments. By establishing a consortium (Cov-MS) with more than 10 academic and industrial partners, including Waters and Sciex, we have shown in recent years that this is a very realistic and relevant research avenue. After successfully defending my PhD thesis in April 2022, I secured an FWO junior postdoctoral fellowship to develop a multiplexed LC-MS assay for screening pathogens and the resulting induced immune response. I also spent five months as a researcher at the Advanced Clinical Biosystems Institute at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, where I was the first to apply the Echo MS technology for high-throughput peptide analysis to screen SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals for a panel of inflammatory biomarker peptides. Starting in April 2023, I am also a guest postdoctoral researcher in the Analytical Biosciences group of Prof. Hankemeier at Leiden University, where I explore the use of Echo MS for other proteomic and metabolomic applications.