Medical writing

    • Lung Cancer
    • Colon Cancer
    • Analgesics
    • Arthritis
    • Acne
    • Cosmetic Dermatology
    • Sleep Disorders
    • Impulse Control Disorders

    Medscape/WebMD . Joint Juice . OrthoNeutrogena . Genentech

    . Manning, Selvage and Lee Public Relations

    Press releases, continuing medical education, slide presentations, newsletters.

    Biotech

    • Proteomics
    • Genomics
    • Microarrays
    • Antibody structure
    • Phage display
    • Genetics

    Caliper . Agilent . Epitomics . Dyax . KaloBios

    Instrumentation and software manuals, white papers, web copy, grant writing and research manuscripts. Examples available on web site.

    Nov, 1998 - Dec, 2000:

    Ciphergen Biosystems

    ProteinChip® Users Guide: Compiled, edited and revised Ciphergen's first company manual and wrote several sections to explain the technology. 

    Web pages: Wrote and edited various sections of Ciphergen's web site.

    SBIR Grant proposal: Wrote a complete first draft of an SBIR grant.

    Newsletter: Designed, wrote and edited Ciphergen's customer newsletter. The document provided customers with recent company information and contained protocol updates not yet available in the manual.

    Nov, 1995-Oct, 1998:

    Genentech

    I spent my postdoc at Genentech, in the laboratory of Dr. Paul Carter. Paul is well known for his expertise in therapeutic antibody engineering and played a key role in humanizing one of Genentech's breakthrough antibody products, Herceptin.

    Using phage display, site-directed mutagenesis and 3D protein modelling, I created a bispecific antibody: a single, full-length, human antibody that binds a different protein at each of its two combining sites. Such constructs might one day be used therapeutically to direct cells of the immune system to kill unwanted cells. The results were published in Nature Biotechnology.

    August, 1988-Oct, 1995:

    Cornell University

    While the proteins involved in the DNA replication process had been elucidated, controls on the timing of initiating DNA replication within the cell cycle remained mysterious. Precise control over the timing of this fundamental process is essential for maintaining ploidy and overall DNA integrity. Genetic studies in Saccharomyces cerevisiae have shed light on some of the main players, including the MCM proteins discovered in the laboratory of Dr. Bik Tye. I showed that Mcm10's absence induces a pause in DNA replication and I described the phenotype of an Mcm10 mutant. This work was published in Molecular and Cellular Biology.

    Education

    Graduate: Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. PhD, 1995, from the Field of Biochemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology.

    Undergraduate: Yale University, New Haven, CT. BS, 1988, in Biology.

    Patents and publications

    Patent

    A Method for Making Multispecific Antibodies having Heteromultimeric and Common Components. Robert Arathoon, Paul Carter, A. Margaret Merchant and Leonard Presta.

    Publications

    A. Margaret Merchant and Scot Weinberger (2000) Recent Advancements in Surface Enhanced Laser Desorption/IonizationTime-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry. Electrophoresis 21:1164-1177.

    A. Margaret Merchant, Zhenping Zhu, Jean Q. Yuan, Audrey Goddard, Camellia Adams, Leonard Presta and Paul Carter (1998) An Efficient Route to Human Bispecific IgG. Nature Biotechnology 16:677-681.

    Paul Carter and A. Margaret Merchant (1997) Engineering Antibodies for Imaging and Therapy. Current Opinion in Biotechnology 8:449-454.

    A. Margaret Merchant, Yasuo Kawasaki, Ming Lei, Yanru Chen and Bik Tye (1997) A Lesion in the DNA Replication Initiation Factor Mcm10 Induces Pausing of Elongation Forks through aChromosomal Replication Origin in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Molecular and Cellular Biology 17:3261-3271.

    Hong Yan, A. Margaret Merchant and Bik Tye (1993) Cell cycle-regulated Nuclear Localization of Mcm2 and Mcm3, which are Required for the Initiation of DNA synthesis at Chromosomal Replication Origins in Yeast. Genes and Development 7: 2149-2160.

    B. Jack Longley, A. Margaret Merchant and Barry Kacinski (1989) In situ Transcription and Detection of CD1a mRNA in Epidermal Cells: An alternative to standard in situ techniques. Journal of Investigative Dermatology 93:432-435.