Dr. Kadomatsu started his career in basic medical research after being a physician of pediatric neuroblastoma. During his graduate studies, he discovered the glycan-binding growth factor midkine. He has been researching the involvement of cancer, neurology, and inflammation. For this achievement, he received the Young Investigator Award from the Japanese Biochemical Society in 1997. 
His research with a Chinese graduate student led him to become particularly interested in the relationship between glycans and the nervous system, which has become the focus of his research. He was a representative of "Neuroglycobiology" (2011-2015), the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (MEXT). He currently represents the "Human Glycome Project," Roadmap 2020, MEXT. 
He served as the President of the Japanese Society of Carbohydrate Research, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Biochemistry, and representative of the Asia/Australia/Africa region of the Advance in Neuroblastoma Research Association. He holds an honorary professorship from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.


 

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Dr. Heinz Läubli received his M.D. and Ph.D. at the Institute of Physiology, University of Zürich (Switzerland). He is now an Assistant Professor and a Research group leader at the University of Basel and an Attending physician in the Division of Oncology, and Head of Glycobiology Research in the  Department of Biomedicine, at the University Hospital Basel.
Dr. Heinz’s research interests are to improve immunotherapy for cancer patients by using translational in vitro and in vivo tumor models, performing correlative analysis of patients treated with immunotherapy, and conducting early clinical interventional trials. His group has been studying the interaction between siaologlycans and their interaction with Siglec receptors on immune cells. It has demonstrated that this pathway can be targeted to augment T-cell stimulation and tumor control. His research goals also include the improvement of cancer immunotherapy by modifying glycans in the tumor microenvironment and glycans of cellular products for adoptive cell therapies, including genetically modified T cells.
 

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Dr. Adnan Halim is a biochemist specializing in mass spectrometry-based glycoproteomics. He obtained his Ph.D. from Gothenburg University, Sweden, in 2012, where he developed methods based on hydrazide chemistry to enrich N- and O-linked glycopeptides from human tissues. This approach led him to discover O-GalNAc linkage to tyrosine residues on amyloid-beta peptides from human cerebrospinal fluid. In 2012, Adnan was recruited to Copenhagen Center for Glycomics (CCG), where he pursued his postdoctoral training and interest in mass spectrometry, protein glycosylations, and precise genome editing. At CCG, Adnan focused on the elusive O-linked mannose modification in eukaryotes. He made major breakthroughs in this field by discovering cadherin/plexin O-mannosylations and the TMTC1-4 glycosyltransferases (GT105). Adnan was promoted to associate professor/group leader at CCG in 2016. Using a combination of techniques, including CRISPR/Cas9 engineering in cell lines and advanced mass spectrometry, his team is currently exploring the functions and regulations of non-classical O-Man glycosylations in mammalian systems.

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Salomé Pinho is the coordinator of the research group "Immunology, Cancer & GlycoMedicine" at the Institute for Research and Innovation in Health (i3S) at the University of Porto, Portugal, and affiliated Professor at the Medical Faculty of the University of Porto, Portugal. She developed her Ph.D. research at the Institute of Molecular Pathology and Immunology of the University of Porto (IPATIMUP) and Boston University Medical School, MA, USA. She performed her postdoctoral work at IPATIMUP-University of Porto in the cancer glycobiology field. Early in her career, Dr. Pinho established a research line focusing on glycoimmunology in Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Her group focuses on understanding the role of post-translational modifications by glycosylation in the regulation of key proteins´ functions involved in cancer and chronic inflammatory conditions, envisioning potential clinical applications. 
She is the Principal Investigator of several national/international grants in cancer glycobiology and inflammatory diseases. She received the Young Investigator Award from the European Association for Cancer Research and was recently distinguished by the Society for Glycobiology with the 2020 Glycobiology Significant Achievement Award.

 

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Dr. Juge has 25-year expertise in the molecular studies of carbohydrate-protein recognition in gut biology and microbiology, and food biotechnology. She is a deputy leader of the Gut Microbes and Health Institute Strategic Programme at the Quadram Institute Bioscience (QIB, Norwich, UK) and an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. Her previous research at Marseille University (France) and Carlsberg Research Institute (Copenhagen, Denmark) focused on the structure-function relationships of plant and microbial carbohydrate-active enzymes and their potential biotechnological application. Since joining QIB in 2007, she has led a Research Group focusing on the Glycobiology of Host-Microbe interactions in the gut. Currently, her group focuses mainly on defining how gut bacteria adapt to the intestinal mucosal environment and the role of mucin glycans in the crosstalk between the gut bacteria and the host. Their work uncovered novel sialic acid metabolism pathways in gut bacteria, contributing to their fitness in the mucus niche and communication with the host. They are also interested in how cell-surface glycosylation of gut symbionts influences the host immune response. Her Lab is involved in initiatives promoting Glycosciences in Europe, such as Sweet Crosstalk or Glytunes multidisciplinary European Training Networks or CarboMet academic-industry network.

 

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Dr. Ute Krengel studied Chemistry in Göttingen (Germany) and obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg in 1991 (structure and molecular mechanism of p21ras). After positions in Toronto (Canada), Groningen (The Netherlands), and Gothenburg (Sweden), she moved to Oslo (Norway), where she has held a full Professorship since 2006. She is particularly interested in molecular mechanisms of diseases, including infectious diseases and cancer, focusing on receptor interactions and enzymes. She currently serves as the Norwegian Block Allocation Group for Synchrotron Research coordinator and as a Norwegian representative of the International Glycoconjugate Organization. 

 

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Dr. Feldman obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, under the supervision of Dr. Armando Parodi. After completing his postdoctoral training in Guy Cornelis and Markus Aebi labs in Switzerland, he joined the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada, as an assistant professor. In 2015 he moved to the Department of Microbiology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, USA. The Feldman lab is interested in microbial glycobiology and bacterial pathogenesis. Dr. Feldman has pioneered the field of bacterial glycoengineering, which is a promising approach for the generation of novel bioconjugate vaccines. He has co-founded two companies (VaxAlta and Omniose) in this area. He is a world leader in studying the human pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii and the biogenesis of bacterial extracellular vesicles. Dr. Feldman is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.

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Professor Matthew Pratt received a B.S. in Biochemistry and Mathematics from the University of Arizona in 1999, where he worked for Robin Polt on glycosylation reactions and the synthesis of glycosylated analogs of enkephalin peptides. He then moved to Carolyn Bertozzi' s lab at the University of California Berkeley and focused on the synthesis of complex carbohydrates and the development of chemical tools to analyze glycosylation, receiving a Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2004. He was then an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow in Tom Muir' s lab at Rockefeller University, where he developed technologies to control proteins in living cells and for the incorporation of modifications into semi-synthetic proteins. He joined the faculty at the Department of Chemistry and Biological Sciences at USC in 2009. His research focuses on the development of bioorthogonal chemical reporters and synthetic proteins to investigate the role of posttranslational modifications, with a particular interest in O-GlcNAc modification.

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Professor Manfred Wuhrer studied Biochemistry at Regensburg University and obtained his Ph.D. in 1999 at Giessen University, Germany. Subsequently, he joined the Leiden University Medical Center, where he was appointed assistant professor in 2005 and associate professor in 2008. In 2013, he was appointed full professor of Analytics for Biomolecular Interactions at VU University Amsterdam. In 2015 he continued his career as Head of the Center for Proteomics and Metabolomics at LUMC, Leiden. He focuses on the development of mass spectrometric methods for glycomics and glycoproteomics and their application in clinical research and biotechnology. Clinical applications cover the fields of rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, colorectal cancer, prostate cancer, longevity, as well as various infectious diseases. 

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Professor Yasuhiro Kajihara received his Ph.D. from the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1993. He spent two years at the Life Science Research Laboratory of Japan Tobacco Inc. as a postdoctoral fellow. In 1995 he joined Yokohama City University as an assistant professor and was then promoted to associate professor in 2001 and full professor in 2007. At YCU, he developed synthetic methods for oligosaccharides and glycoproteins. In 2009, he moved to the Department of Chemistry at Osaka University. He studies new synthetic methods of glycoproteins in order to understand how oligosaccharides regulate protein functions.

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The research activity of Professor De Castro is in carbohydrate structural chemistry, and her training in this subject started during her bachelor thesis, which focused on plant polysaccharides. Since then, even though Professor De Castro continued her work on carbohydrate structural chemistry, she shifted her interests and dedicated her activity to the analysis of the bacterial membrane carbohydrate components, paying attention, but not limiting the work, to Gram-negative bacteria and lipopolysaccharides (LPSs). This work has resulted in the development of state-of-the-art chemical and spectroscopical approaches that have been later applied with success to different kinds of carbohydrates, such as those from the bacteria of the gut microbiota or those from the giant viruses. This last topic is Professor De Castro's major field of research.
Professor De Castro is the author/co-author of about 130 peer-reviewed publications, an associated Editor for the journal Carbohydrate Polymers, and a member of the editorial board of Carbohydrate Research, Glycobiology, and Polysaccharides. She fruitfully collaborates with different research institutions, such as the Department of Plant Pathology (University of Nebraska Lincoln, NE, USA) and the Structural and Genomics Information Laboratory in Marseille (France).

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Dr. Vojo Deretic is the department chair of the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine and the director of the NIH-funded Autophagy, Inflammation and Metabolism (AIM) Center of Biomedical Research Excellence. The AIM center aims to promote autophagy research nationally and internationally and to develop a cadre of junior faculty along with senior experts in this area to study fundamental mechanisms and how autophagy intersects with a broad spectrum of human disease and health states. He received his undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral education in Belgrade, Paris, and Chicago. Dr. Deretic’s main contributions to science come from studies by his team on the role of autophagy in infection, immunity, and inflammation. Recently, Dr. Deretic’s group developed the concept of a cellular system termed MERIT for coordinated membrane repair, removal, and replacement. This involves recognition of exposed glycoconjugates on damaged membranes, membrane repair, removal of membranes by autophagy, and replacement of membranous organelles through respective biogenesis programs. 

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Dr. Drickamer began working in the field of glycan-binding receptors as a postdoctoral fellow at Duke University. These receptors have been the focus of his subsequent research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Oxford University, and currently at Imperial College London. His work on identifying a common carbohydrate recognition led to the definition of C-type lectins as one of the major groups of glycan-binding receptors. His ongoing research is a joint project with Dr. Maureen Taylor. The aim is to develop a broad understanding of the biological roles of sugar recognition. They have used a combination of biochemical, biophysical, and molecular biological approaches to understand how carbohydrate-recognition domains provide selective recognition of glycoproteins and cell surfaces. In addition, they seek to determine how such recognition leads to the targeting of biological functions, such as innate immunity to pathogens, clearance of serum glycoproteins, cell adhesion, and cell signaling, and how genetic variation in sugar-binding receptors causes changes in their molecular properties and hence contributes to human disease. Dr. Taylor and Dr. Drickamer co-authored the textbook Introduction to Glycobiology, designed to introduce the field to students and researchers from other disciplines.

 

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Professor Matthew P. DeLisa is the William L. Lewis Professor of Engineering in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University. His research focuses on understanding and controlling the molecular mechanisms underlying protein biogenesis--folding and assembly, membrane translocation, and post-translational modifications--in the complex environment of a living cell. He received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Connecticut in 1996; a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Maryland in 2001; and postdoctoral work at the University of Texas-Austin, Department of Chemical Engineering. DeLisa joined the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University in 2003. He has also served as a Gastprofessur at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) in the Institut für Mikrobiologie. He has garnered a number of honors and awards, including most recently the Biotechnology Progress Award for Excellence in Biological Engineering Publication, and was named the to the inaugural “Life Sciences Power 50” by City & State New York. He is an elected fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the American Academy of Microbiology, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In recent years, he has served on the IDA/DARPA Defense Science Study Group and the National Academies Committee on Innovative Technologies to Advance Pharmaceutical Manufacturing.

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