Glycosylation creates a diverse array of carbohydrate epitopes attached to cell surface proteins and lipids. These carbohydrates or glycans play crucial roles in a diverse array of medically relevant biological processes from viral pathogenesis to tumor cell metastasis and stem cell differentiation. The biosynthetic and molecular complexity of these biopolymers, which are branched and often epimeric, has constrained our understanding of both the chemistry and biology of these molecules. New approaches to research in this arena are bringing together chemists and biologists to meet the analytical, synthetic and biochemical challenges of understanding this important class of biomolecules.

Agenda

*Presentation times are subject to change.

Speakers

Organizers

Jon Lai, PhD

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Jon Lai received his B. Sc. (Hons.) in Biochemistry from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, then completed his Ph.D. in 2004 in Biophysics and Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin – Madison with Sam Gellman. From 2004 – March 2007, he was Helen Hay Whitney post-doctoral fellow with Chris Walsh at Harvard Medical School and then studied virus envelope glycoprotein structure and function as a research associate in Stephen Harrison’s lab (Harvard Medical School) from April – November 2007. He began his current appointment as Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in December 2007. His research program has two major focus areas: (i) dissecting and evolving antibody-antigen interactions by phage display; (ii) understanding mechanisms of viral membrane fusion and how this process can be inhibited with designed peptides and proteins.

Lara Mahal, PhD

New York University

Lara K. Mahal is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at New York University. An expert in glycomics, she is currently a Sloan Foundation Fellow and the recipient of the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, an NSF CAREER Award and a Beckman Fellowship. Professor Mahal obtained her B. A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz, her Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley and was a Jane Coffins Child Postdoctoral Fellow at Sloan Kettering Research Center.

Jennifer Henry, PhD

The New York Academy of Sciences

Speakers

Sam Danishefsky, PhD

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Samuel J. Danishefsky received his B.S. degree at Yeshiva University. He did his graduate research under the late Professor Peter Yates. He then joined the laboratory of Professor Gilbert Stork at Columbia University as an NIH Postdoctoral Associate. His first academic position was at the University of Pittsburgh, where he joined as Assistant Professor in 1963. He was promoted to Associate Professor, Professor, and University Professor. In January 1980, he moved to Yale University and was named Eugene Higgins Professor in 1981. Appointed by President A. Bartlett Giamatti as Chairman of the Department of Chemistry, he served until 1987. He became Sterling Professor at Yale in 1990. In 1993, Professor Danishefsky moved back to New York as Professor of Chemistry at Columbia University and the Eugene Kettering Chair and Head of the Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. In 1996, he shared the Wolf Prize in Chemistry with Professor Gilbert Stork. In 2006, he was the recipient of the Franklin Medal in Chemistry, the Bristol Myers Squibb Lifetime Achievement Award in Chemistry, and the National Academy of Sciences Award in the Chemical Sciences.

Lara Mahal, PhD

New York University

See biosketch above

Suzanne Walker, PhD

Harvard Medical School

Professor Suzanne Walker received her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1992, where she eventually joined the faculty as a Professor of Chemistry. In 2004, she moved to the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School. Professor Walker started her independent career working on cell wall biosynthesis in bacteria, an area that continues to be a major focus. She currently studies metabolic pathways involved in microbial survival and pathogenesis. The underlying motivation for her projects is to develop the scientific foundations for the discovery and evaluation of new targets, strategies, and compounds to treat resistant bacterial infections.

Peng Wu, PhD

Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Peng Wu received his doctorate from the Scripps Research Institute in 2005 under the guidance of Professor K. Barry Sharpless. From September 2004 to April 2005, he was a visiting student in the laboratory of Professor Craig J. Hawker at IBM Almaden Research Center and at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His graduate studies, in collaboration with the Hawker lab, demonstrated for the first time the powerful utilization of click chemistry in the preparation of well-defined macromolecules and nanostructured materials. After completing postdoctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley with Professor Carolyn Bertozzi, he joined the faculty of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 2008. The Wu lab research spans the disciplines of chemistry, materials science and biology, with a focus on the invention of new tools for studying protein glycosylation, especially those related to infectious diseases.

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The Society for Glycobiology

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