Date/Time Date(s) - 22/01/20261:30 pm - 2:30 pm
Title: Expanding the Bioorthogonal Chemistry Toolkit: From Studying Glycan-Protein
Date: Thursday, January 22nd, 2025
Time: 1:30pm-2:30pm
Room: ABB 165
Host: Anthony Rullo and Ryan Wylie
Abstract:
The thick “sugar coating” that covers all cells, comprising complex carbohydrate structures called glycans, plays important roles in biology and disease. The interactions of these glycans with glycan-binding proteins is central to a diverse range of physiological and pathological processes including cell-cell communication, molecular recognition, immune responses and cancer. However, identifying the precise glycan and glycoprotein ligands involved in interactions with glycan-binding proteins, and their downstream functional mechanisms, is challenging. While significant progress has been made, novel chemical biology approaches are needed to meet the demand for new information to advance our understanding of the function of these important biomolecules and to develop novel glycan-based therapeutics. This presentation will discuss advances our research group has made in applying bioorthogonal chemistry to study glycans and their interactions on cells. We have developed enzymatic cell-surface glyco-engineering techniques to selectively install various glyco-motifs bearing chemical reporters and photoactivatable linkers to visualize and characterize glycans, glycoproteins and their binding receptors. These enzymatic methods have been expanded to glycan synthesis to interrogate and capture glycan-protein interactions, enabling the identification of functional glycan ligands of glycan-binding proteins like Siglecs, which are important immunoinhibitory receptors involved in cancer immune evasion. We also apply biorthogonal chemistry with ‘clickable’ chemical modalities to facilitate ligation of biomolecules like proteins and sugars to nanomaterials to develop novel targeted nanomedicines for cancer therapeutics.
Biography:
Dr. Chantelle Capicciotti is an Associate Professor and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Chemical Biology at Queen’s University, jointly appointed in the Departments of Chemistry and Biomedical and Molecular Sciences. She received her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Ottawa in 2014 with Dr. Robert Ben, then completed post-doctoral research with Prof. Geert-Jan Boons at the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center (CCRC), University of Georgia, from 2014-2018. She started at Queen’s in 2018 as a Queen’s National Scholar in Precision Molecular Medicine, developing an interdisciplinary research program focused on complex glycan synthesis, developing glyco-engineering tools to understand cellular glycan-protein interactions and functions, and designing glycan-based strategies to combat disease.