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. 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. Katharina Paschinger gained her doctorate in 2008 and has been a self-financed FWF Fellow at the Universität für Bodenkultur Wien since 2009. She has led three projects related to glycan diversity in different species, ranging from model and parasitic nematodes to marine species, such as molluscs and echinoderms. Over the years, she has developed and optimized glycomic workflows based on off-line HPLC-MALDI-TOF MS, suitable for discovering a wide range of glycan epitopes, including unusual fucosylated, glucuronylated, sulphated, and zwitterionic modifications of N-glycans, with roles in self/non-self-recognition. She is the author of some 50 original papers, including publications in Molecular & Cellular Proteomics and Nature Communications, as well as various review articles and book chapters. Privately, she is a mother of three children and a passionate gardener and opera lover.

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Gunnar C. Hansson, M.D., Ph.D. is a Professor in University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He has been working on mucus, mucins, and mucin glycans his whole career, focusing on the gastrointestinal and respiratory tracts. He has been part of and at the leading edge of developing molecular understanding of mucins over the last 30 years with a focus on their biosynthesis and structure. He and his team discovered that an attached colon mucus layer impenetrable to bacteria separates commensal bacteria from the host and that the chronically diseased lungs are covered with a similar type of mucus. They have studied and discovered that goblet cells making the mucus are more specialized and diverse than previously appreciated. The studied structural variability of glycans on the mucins and their mucin domains are important for commensal bacteria selection and bacterial utilization as a nutritional source. He has founded the Mucin Biology Groups constellation with a total of seven PIs working in the area at the University of Gothenburg (www.medkem.gu.se/mucinbiology).

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Professor Shang-Cheng Hung received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan (1992). He did postdoctoral research with Professor Andrew Streitwieser at the University of California at Berkeley (1994-1995) and Professor Chi-Huey Wong at The Scripps Research Institute (1995-1998). Professor Hung started independent research at the Institute of Chemistry, Academia Sinica, in 1998 and moved to the Department of Chemistry, National Tsing Hua University, in 2005. In 2009, he moved back to Taipei and joined the Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica, where he was promoted to Distinguished Professor in 2012. His research interests aim to develop new strategies for synthesizing complex carbohydrates such as glycosaminoglycans and sialo-sugars on the cell surface to probe their specific interactions with disease-associated proteins.

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Dr. Anja Münster-Kühnel studied Biology and Chemistry in a Teacher Education Programme at the University of Hannover in Germany. After the First State Examination in Biology and Chemistry, she received her Ph.D. at Hannover Medical School (MHH) in the Department of Microbiology by cloning the murine enzyme CMP-sialic acid synthase, an essential enzyme in the biosynthesis of sialoglycoconjugates. As a group leader at the Institute of Clinical Biochemistry, MHH, she continued the molecular characterization of this enzyme and the investigation of its nuclear localization. Further, sialylation-deficient constitutive and conditional mouse models have been generated to unravel the biological function of sialoglycoconjugates in the development and immune system, especially for kidney development and operation. Recently she started to investigate novel functions of polysialic acid beyond the nervous system.

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Dr. Hamed Jafar-Nejad received his M.D. from Tehran University of Medical Sciences and learned molecular biology techniques at a research institute in Iran. After one year at the University of Ottawa, he moved to Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. He received his postdoctoral training in Notch signaling and Drosophila neurogenesis with Dr. Hugo Bellen. In December 2006, he started his research group, first at the University of Texas Health Science Center-Houston and later at Baylor, where they continued their studies on the role of glycosylation and deglycosylation in animal development. In recent years, the Jafar-Nejad laboratory has devoted significant effort to understanding the function of human rare disease genes in animal development. These collaborative studies have led to the identification of Poglut1 as a dominant genetic suppressor of the liver phenotypes in a mouse model for Alagille syndrome, the identification of a new form of muscular dystrophy caused by recessive mutations in POGLUT1, and the discovery of several pathways downstream of the deglycosylation enzyme N-glycanase 1 (NGLY1), mutations in which cause a multi-system developmental disorder. This work will likely provide novel insight into how glycans regulate animal development and might help establish new therapeutic approaches for these diseases.

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Inka Brockhausen received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Toronto, Canada. At Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, she studied both structures and biosynthesis of O-and N-glycans and discovered a number of novel enzymes in the O- and N-glycosylation pathways. As an associate professor at the University of Toronto, her research interest focused on structural and enzymatic glycosylation abnormalities in cancer and cystic fibrosis. Further studies on the link between glycosylation changes in arthritis and inflammatory conditions were carried out at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. A major interest became the discovery of novel glycosyltransferases in bacteria, in collaboration with synthetic chemists, e.g., Walter Szarek, Ole Hindsgaul, Vladimir Torgov, and others that were instrumental in the synthesis of natural substrate analogs. Glycosylation inhibitors were developed that could alter the biological properties of cells or could be anti-bacterial compounds. Current directions in the Brockhausen lab at the Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences aim to understand polysaccharide synthesis in bacteria and fungi and the mechanisms of enzymes involved in carbohydrate metabolism. Brockhausen also has a keen interest in protein aggregation in neurodegeneration and is a member of the Centre for Neuroscience Studies. 

 

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Dr. Sriram Neelamegham is a UB Distinguished Professor of Chemical & Biological Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Medicine at the State University of New York-Buffalo. His laboratory works at the interface of engineering and medicine, with applications in studies of human disease mechanics. Such work falls under the umbrella of "Systems Glycobiology," where high-throughput experimentation and mathematical modeling are coupled to describe the interplay between the competing glycoEnzymes that regulate cellular glycosylation patterns. Prof. Neelamegham has published over 140 research articles, book chapters, and patents. He receives the NIH Independent Scientist award, the 2015 State University of New York Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, and the 2018 Schoellkopf medal from the Western New York American Chemical Society. He is an Elected Fellow of the American Institute of Biological and Medical Engineering (AIMBE) and Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). He has served on NIH advisory panels and editorial boards of various journals. He is currently the Discussion Leader developing the Symbol Nomenclature for Glycans (SNFG) at the NCBI-glycans resource. Before moving to Buffalo. Prof. Neelamegham received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering/Bioengineering from the Rice University and completed his post-doctoral training at the Baylor College of Medicine. 

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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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