Dr. Narimatsu is an Associate Professor at Copenhagen Center for Glycomics, Ph.D. (2008, Tsukuba University, Japan). His study focuses on the structure, biosynthesis, and genetic regulation of complex carbohydrates. He received training for eight years at the glycobiology lab, Research Center for Medical Glycoscience (RCMG) in Japan. Joined a Center of Excellence in Glycomics funded by the Danish National Research Foundation at the University of Copenhagen in 2012 and contributed to developing a comprehensive and high-throughput platform for CRISPR/Cas9 gene targeting of the human glycome (GlycoCRISPR), a large library of glycoengineered cells (GlycoDisplay), a cell-based platform for the display and production of human Mucin tandem repeat (MucinDisplay). His research interests include a basic understanding of genetic regulation and biosynthesis of protein glycosylation, consequences of deficiencies in glycosylation in diseases, and biomedical applications. 

His group has taken a global "glycogenome" engineering approach to protein glycosylation and proposed a Cell-Based glycan array platform to display the human glycome–i.e., display of all human glycans on proteins, proteoglycans, and lipids. This self-renewable array is useful for discovering biological interactions involving glycans, and screening of true high-affinity interactions with glycans requires the natural biological context of specific proteins and cell surfaces.

 

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Professor Ribbeck obtained her Bachelor’s degree and her Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. She continued her postdoctoral research at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany, and the Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School. Professor Ribbeck established her independent research group as a Bauer Fellow at the FAS Center for Systems Biology, Harvard University, in 2007 and joined the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT as an Assistant Professor in 2010.
Her laboratory studies the basic mechanisms of biological hydrogels by which mucus barriers exclude, or allow passage of different molecules and pathogens, and the mechanisms pathogens have evolved to penetrate mucus barriers. It hopes to provide the foundation for a theoretical framework that captures general principles governing selectivity in mucus, and likely other biological hydrogels such as the extracellular matrix, and bacterial biofilms. Her Lab’s work may also be the basis for the reconstitution of synthetic gels that mimic the basic selective properties of biological gels.

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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. Harry Brumer is a Professor in the Michael Smith Laboratories and Department of Chemistry, and an Associate Member of the Department of Botany and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, at the University of British Columbia.
Dr. Brumer’s research interests include the discovery, functional and structural characterization, and biotechnological applications of carbohydrate-active enzymes and carbohydrate-binding proteins. Through close collaboration with geneticists and structural biologists, research in the Brumer group seeks to bring molecular-level insight into the biological processes underpinning carbon flux in ecosystems ranging from the forest to the human gut.

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Dr. Danny Hsu is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Biological Chemistry, Academia Sinica. During his doctorate study at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, he determined the atomic structure of a lantibiotic, nisin, in complex with Gram-positive bacterial cell wall precursor, Lipid II. He coined the term "pyrophosphate case" to explain how nisin targets Lipid II to achieve its antimicrobial activity, providing a blueprint for future antibiotics developments. During his postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge, UK, Danny demonstrated the proof of concept of using solution-state NMR spectroscopy to investigate the co-translational folding of nascent polypeptide chains on the ribosome. His earlier independent research focused on the folding mechanisms and functional implications of topologically knotted proteins. He currently focuses on developing an integrated biophysics and structural biology platform, including cryo-electron microscopy, mass spectrometry, and molecular modeling, to investigate the structure-activity relationship (SAR) of glycoproteins, and coronavirus spike proteins, in particular, and how mutations impact on the SAR in the context of glycosylation.

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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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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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Dr. Jessica Kwok is an Associate Professor in Neuroscience at the University of Leeds. Her lab focuses on elucidating the functions of a pericellular coat called perineuronal net, with the main components being glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) and glycoproteins, in the regulation of neuroplasticity. The role of the GAGs in plasticity and axon regeneration has been the main research topic. In the last ten years, her work has played the key role in establishing the mechanism of PNN formation, the interaction of different PNN molecules, and how the interactions define the PNN structure and exert their effects on plasticity. The work has led to the current widely accepted concept that PNNs are crucial in controlling central nervous system (CNS) plasticity. These concepts allow her to design plasticity enhancement treatment for repairing and recovering deficits in the CNS, with a focus on spinal cord injury and memory enhancement. 

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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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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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