Ed Naylor

Recipient of the Robert Guthrie Award 2014

Dr Edwin W. Naylor graduated with an AB degree in biology/chemistry from Middlebury College, VT; subsequently received his PhD from Utah State University, UT; and an MPH from the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, PA. His research career started at Buffalo Children’s Hospital and the State University of New York in 1972 where he did his post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Robert Guthrie and continued working with him for 12 years. He then moved on to Pittsburgh where he worked for 20 years at the University of Pittsburgh, Western Pennsylvania Hospital, Magee Womens Hospital, and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. In 1994 he moved on to become founder, President and Laboratory Director of Neo Gen Screening Inc. in Bridgeville, PA. Currently he is an Adjunct Professor at the Medical University of South Carolina and President of BioChem Genetics LLC in Charleston, SC. He serves on the Board of Directors of and is a consultant to several biotechnology companies including Parabase Genomics, in Boston; DiaVacs, in San Diego; Advanced Technology Health Care Solutions, in Pittsburgh; and Myogenetics, in Buffalo.

Dr Naylor was involved in some of the very early pilot newborn screening programs for congenital hypothyroidism, cystic fibrosis, maple syrup urine disease, and muscular dystrophy. He was at the forefront of multiplexed newborn screening with his work in the development and application of tandem mass spectrometry for the detection of PKU, MCADD and other inborn errors in amino acid, organic acid, and fatty acid metabolism from a single dried blood spot. He started routine newborn screening using MS/MS in 1993 and over the next decade screened >3 million newborns. Doing this in the private rather than in the public health sector did not make him popular with many colleagues in state laboratories and it took a long time before his large contributions received the proper recognition. In the last decade Dr Naylor has been active in the development of second-tier molecular confirmation and in the application of next generation sequencing for newborn screening.

Dr Naylor is member of a many professional societies and has served as an editor of many journals. He has published more than 120 papers and book chapters and numerous abstracts for scientific meetings.

During ISNS2016 Dr Naylor received the Guthrie Award itself from ISNS President Dr Veronica Wiley, in the presence of Mrs Marika Kase (PerkinElmer).

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