Translational Glycobiology in Human Health and Disease

Dr. Michelle Kilcoyne is Lecturer in Glycosciences at the National University of Ireland Galway. Dr. Michelle Kilcoyne completed her PhD in analytical carbohydrate chemistry in the School of Chemistry at NUI Galway in 2004, specialising in structural analysis of bacterial polysaccharides. She then took up a postdoctoral position in Arizona State University where she further specialised in mass spectrometry and HPLC, as well as expanding her interests to mammalian glycosylation. She returned as a postdoctoral researcher to NUI Galway in 2007 working on industry-supported and European projects, developing high throughput platforms for carbohydrate profiling. In 2014 Dr. Kilcoyne was appointed Lecturer in Glycosciences, is currently a member of Discipline of Microbiology at NUI Galway and leads the Carbohydrate Signalling Group. She is the recipient of a Royal Society of Chemistry Analytical Chemistry Trust Fund Fellowship for 2018. Her main interests are in glycoanalytics, novel glycomics platform development and carbohydrate-mediated host-microbe interactions. Prof. Lokesh Joshi is Director of the Advanced Glycoscience Research Cluster and leader of the Glycoscience Group at NUI Galway, a Co-Director of CÚRAM, a medical device centre, and the Vice-President for Research at NUI Galway. His principal focus of research is in understanding the roles of glycans and lectins in health and diseases and developing novel technologies for glycomics. Prof. Joshi has been involved in two spin out companies, Arizona Engineered Therapeutics (AzERx) and Aquila Biosciences. The NIH and VC sources funded AzERx to develop peptide-based therapeutics for vascular applications and AzERx was acquired by Orthologic (Now Capstone Therapeutics) in 2006. Aquila Bioscience is a healthcare company working on various projects funded by EI, EU, European Defence Agency and private industries. Prof. Joshi is an SFI-Stokes Professor of Glycosciences and the Irish representative on European Universities Association’s Research Programme Working group.

Section 1: Glycobiology
2. Carbohydrates and human glycosylation
3. Carbohydrate-binding proteins
4. Carbohydrate-active enzymes

Section 2: Glycobiology and health
5. Glycoimmunology
6. Neuroglycobiology
7. Commensal glycobiology and gut health
8. Microbiota accessible carbohydrates and the gut microbiome
9. Regenerative medicine and glycobiology
10. Exosome glycosylation for signalling and function

Section 3: Glycobiology and disease
11. Cancer
12. Altered glycosylation in autoimmune diseases
13. Metabolic diseases: Disorders of carbohydrate metabolism and lysosomal storage
14. Congenital Disorders of Glycosylation
15. Microbial infectious disease glycobiology
16. Parasite glycobiology
17. Glycobiology of neurodegenerative diseases
18. Glycobiology of neural injury and regeneration

Section 4: Glycotechnologies
19. Diagnostics and novel carbohydrate recognition molecules
20. Advanced glycoanalytics
21. Glycomics microarrays
22. Glycoengineering and systems biology
23. Computational Glycobiology
24. Carbohydrate-incorporated Biomaterials

Section 5: Glycobiology and Society
25. Translational glycobiology and entrepreneurship for health
26. Glycobiology: Public engagement and society
27. Policy and regulatory requirements for glycosylation
28. Public health and translational glycobiology
29. Future perspectives/ summary