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Serge Cremers, Pharm. D., PhD, is an associate professor at Columbia University Medical Center and an attending clinical chemist at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He is the director of the Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology Laboratory at Columbia University Medical Center and the director of the Biomarkers Core Laboratory of the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, which is home to Columbia University’s Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) and the largest mass spectrometry facility at Columbia University, focusing on targeted metabolomics and the measurement of drugs. Dr Cremers’ areas of expertise are bio-analytical chemistry, translational and clinical pharmacology, therapeutic drug monitoring, as well as clinical chemistry of metabolic bone diseases. He conducts research in all of these areas and has published over 90 papers.

Most drug discovery efforts begin with a biological target—the molecule inside the body whose activity the drug is expected to enhance or diminish. Assurance that the target is pharmacologically accessible and responsible in some way for the disease in question is based on target validation studies.

Problem: According to the Allotrope Foundation, “Underpinning every experiment, every scientific decision, and every regulatory submission is data generated by a scientist using an instrument in the laboratory.” These mountains of analytical data are analyzed and interpreted in global R&D laboratories to help evaluate, identify, and characterize compounds and formulations.

Problem: Microplate readers are a common lab commodity; they’re used across research and drug discovery to detect the occurrence of biological events. However, the potential for experimental errors is a frustrating reality. An incorrect dispensing position, for example, will provide unreliable results—requiring researchers to re-run the assay or, if undetected, lead to faulty data. The same is true if the dispenser isn’t properly primed.

Josephine Ferreon is an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology, Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. Her structural biology group characterizes various intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), important in stem cell biology and neurodegenerative diseases, using standard and state-of-the-art biochemical/biophysical techniques such as NMR and single molecule fluorescence spectroscopy.


From the ancient prophets of the Bible to Nostradamus in the Middle Ages to modern day “psychics,” people have always had a natural curiosity about the future, and just about everyone has speculated as to what it will be like. However, even modest predictions that seemed perfectly reasonable at the time have a way of missing the mark—the one thing that we know for certain about the future is that it will bring change in unexpected ways.













