Advances and New Horizons in Glycobiology. 3 – 5 December 2024, London, UK
The Biochemical Society meeting “Advances and New Horizons in Glycobiology” was held between 3 and 5 December 2024 in London. The scientific programme featured talks on new methods in glycan analytics, insights into glycan (bio)synthesis and degradation as well as the application of glycobiology knowledge for both medical and biotechnological purposes.
Highlights of the meeting were the three 2024 Biochemical Society Award Lectures from prominent glycoscientists. Professor Sir Mike Ferguson from the University of Dundee presented The Morton Lecture in which he described the discovery of GPI anchors, a key protein modification at the interface between glycobiology and lipid biochemistry, and his group’s current efforts to exploit this knowledge to design new drugs combatting parasitic infections. Dr Ben Schumann from Imperial College London and The Francis Crick Institute, recipient of the Society’s Early Career Research Award, talked about the chemical biology approaches he developed for the specific in vivo labelling of glycans using the “bump and hole” technology to modify biosynthetic enzymes and some recent applications of the methodology, for example, in uncovering functions of COVID-19 glycosylation. Professor Gideon Davies from the University of York, recipient of The Centenary Award, presented his group’s work developing activity-based probes to investigate the functions of carbohydrate-modifying enzymes in cells and whole animals.
Discussions at the meeting agreed that the future of glycoscience would greatly benefit from educating non-glycobiologist colleagues about the concepts and methods used in the field. This future was shown to be in good hands though when the three poster awards for the meeting were presented to Arya Ajay (University of Nottingham, “Improving the detection of disrupted glycan accumulation in Mucopolysaccharidoses patients”), Saeed Akkad (University of York, “Chemical biology approaches to understanding the role of ribitol-5-phosphate transferases in α-dystroglycanopathies”) and Lara Fragapane (The Rosalind Franklin Institute, “Solving the mysteries of human protein N-glycosylation”).
