Dr. Lim received his Ph.D. at Boston University’s Department of Biology where he gained extensive training in cell biology, physiology, proteomics and mass spectrometry. During this period he developed novel reversible colorimetric and luminescent metal chelate-based protein dyes for proteomics which are widely used in the Life Sciences.
Since that time, Dr. Lim has spent more than 20 years in the biotechnology industry. His work at AmberGen has been synergistic with and culminated in the development its current photocleavable mass-tag based MALDI-IHC spatial biology approach for the molecular imaging of tissues, as applied to both ‘omics’ based research and discovery as well as clinical pathology. His early work at AmberGen on photocleavable (PC) linkers and tRNA-based protein engineering was instrumental in the commercialization of its first generation of photocleavable and protein labeling products including PC-Biotin, PC-Phosphoramidites and fluorescent tRNAs. These products have been commercialized for research use in partnership with several major vendors of biomolecular reagents. In the disease biomarker space, he led the development of several blood-based immunodiagnostics including for cancer, autoimmune disease and allergy in collaboration with leading biomedical institutes such as Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital. As part of these efforts, Dr. Lim directed an NIH-supported project which led to the discovery and patenting of two novel autoantigen biomarkers for the autoimmune liver disease PBC, with the assays currently undergoing FDA-clearance in a licensing agreement with INOVA Diagnostics. He also led the development a new biomarker and drug discovery technology known as photocleavable bead-array mass spectrometry (PC-BAMS) which is synergistic with MALDI-IHC technology.
Dr. Lim is co-inventor on 12 issued U.S. patents in the biotechnology space and the author of more than 15 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles. Dr. Lim is currently leading AmberGen’s development of its innovative MALDI-IHC tissue imaging technology.