Philip M. Hemken, Ph.D.
Principal Scientist
Abbott Diagnostics Division
Abbott Laboratories
Dr. Hemken grew up on a farm in North central Iowa and completed his B.S. in Microbiology at Iowa State University, Ames, IA, in 1986. He completed his M.A. in Biotechnology in 1991 at Washington University in St. Louis, MO while working full-time in a renal research under Dr. Stephen Gluck at Jewish Hospital at Washington University Medical Center, and in 1996 he completed his doctoral research in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology in the department of Animal Science at Iowa State University. Dr. Hemken studied intermediate filaments in muscle under Dr. Richard M. Robson. He discovered that paranemin was an intermediate filament (IF) and helped with the discovery that synemin was also an IF.
After a one year postdoctoral position at Argonne National Laboratory working for Dr. Andrei Mirzabekov, Dr. Hemken began working at Abbott Laboratories in 1997 in the Diagnostics Division. At Abbott, he has worked with ER and PgR slide based and ¼ inch bead assays for breast cancer, and multiple oncology immunoassays on IMx, AxSYM. He has also worked in molecular diagnostics R&D developing real-time RT-PCR and FISH oncology assays for 7 years. Since 2005 he has worked in R&D developing immunoassays for ARCHITECT. Dr. Hemken is passionate about the use of biomarker panels for the early detection of cancer. He has submitted twenty invention disclosures and submitted six patent applications.
Dr. Hemken resides in Pleasant Prairie, WI with his wife and three daughters. He enjoys antique automobiles, gardening, woodworking, swimming and biking. He and his wife helped to plant CrossWay Community Church in Bristol, WI in 1999 and are both actively involved there in the new comer ministry and missions in Kenya.
Scientific Shorts
Selected Publications
P. Berger, E. Paus, P. M. Hemken, C. Sturgeon, W. W. Stewart, J. P. Skinner, L. C. Harwick, S. C. Saldana, C. S. Ramsay, K. R. Rupprecht, K. H. Olsen, J.-M. Bidart, U.-H. Stenman. Candidate epitopes for measurement of hCG and related molecules: the second ISOBM TD-7 workshop. Tumor Biol. 2013; 34:4033-4057.
Morota, K., Nakagawa, M., Sekiya, R., Hemken, P.M., Sokoll, L.J., Elliott, D., Chan, D.W., and Dowell B.L. (2011) A comparative evaluation of Golgi protein-73, fucosylated hemopexin, AFP, and PIVKA-II in the serum of patients with chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. Clin. Chem. Lab. Med. 49:711-8.
Gandhi L., Camidge D.R., Ribeiro de Oliveira M., Bonomi P., Gandara D., Khaira D., Hann C.L., McKeegan E.M., Litvinovich E., Hemken P.M., Dive C., Enschede S.H., Nolan C., Chiu Y.L., Busman T., Xiong H., Krivoshik A.P., Humerickhouse R., Shapiro G.I., and Rudin C.M. (2011) A phase 1 study of Navitoclax (ABT-263), a novel Bcl-2 family inhibitor, in subjects with small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and other solid tumors. J. Clinical Oncology, 29:909-16.
Davis, G., Chan, S., Biegalski, T., Hemken, P., Dua, R., Elliott, D., Dunn, W., Sokoll L., Chan, D. and Dowell B.L. (2008) Performance Evaluation of an Automated Research Use Immunoassay for Tissue Inhibitor of Metalloproteinases-1 (TIMP‑1). J. Clin. Ligand Assay Society, 30:70-76.
Hemken, P., Bellin, R., Sernett, S., Becker, B., Huiatt, T., and Robson, R. (1997) Molecular characteristics of the novel intermediate filament protein paranemin. Sequence reveals EAP-300 and IFAPa-400 are highly homologous to paranemin. J. Biol. Chem. 272:32489-32499.
Hemken, P., Guo, X.-L., Wang, Z.-Q., Zhang K., and Gluck, S. (1992) Immunologic evidence that vacuolar H+ATPase with heterogeneous forms of Mr = 31,000 subunit have different membrane distributions in mammalian kidney. J. Biol. Chem. 267:9948-9957.