ABSTRACT:

Recent advances in the Glycobiology field have helped to establish a relationship between therapeutic protein function and glycosylation structures. Most of these studies rely on the comparison of mixed glycoforms, which complicate the clear interpretation of distinct structure activity relationships. We describe the use of combinatorial genetic libraries to engineer yeast cells that perform entirely human-like glycosylation with exceptional fidelity and uniformity. The use of these libraries to elucidate structure function relationships of glycoproteins and the ability to manufacture complex glycoproteins with unprecedented control over glycosylation will be discussed.

BIO:

Prof. Gerngross holds faculty positions at the Thayer School of Engineering, the Department of Biological Sciences and the Department of Chemistry at Dartmouth College. In 2000 he co-founded GlycoFi Inc. and served as the company's chief scientific officer until its acquisition by Merck and Co in the summer of 2006. He regularly publishes in leading scientific journals including, Science, Nature Biotechnology and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences.

In 2006 Nature Biotechnology named Gerngross as one of the most notable people in Biotechnology in the past ten years.

In the fall of 2006 Prof. Gerngross joined SV Life Science (formerly Schroder Ventures Life Science) as a Venture Partner to advise on investment opportunities in the bio-therapeutics area. In 2007 he co-founded Adimab with Dane Wittrup at MIT, where he currently serves as the founding CEO.