#chembio and #bioorganic crowd: Registration to ESBOC is open. Join us on 27th-29th May for the oldest meeting in chemical biology in Europe, at the awesome Schlosshotel Pillnitz in Dresden!
Check out www.esboc.org.uk or register directly at eveeno.com/esboc2026!
Yep - just needs the resolution to do this. Similar to Raman for alkynes etc. - happy to pick it up when the technology is there!
Also, in our defense, there was a pandemic during the grant period π
The first pre-print was out in December 2023 π
What would you have liked an IR of? π€ Single cells would be awesome...
Sometimes things just work out as planned...
Left: Grant application with the fantastic Erhard Hohenester (2019)
Right: Published paper (2025)
Don't ask about the revision process ;)
Out now in @natchembio.nature.com: Xylosyltransferase engineering to manipulate proteoglycans in mammalian cells π www.nature.com/articles/s41... check out the press release below! #glycotime
... through neural network-supported molecular dynamics by Mert SaΔΔ±roΔlugil and Carme Rovira Virgili. This produced a tool with great selectivity in mammalian cells! #glycotime
Engineering a single transferase such as the important MGAT1 to selectively accept one such analogue is therefore a particular challenge. Yu, Saskia and colleagues took it on, eventually refining the first enzyme-substrate pair...
Making specific tools for GlcNAc transferases has been challenging - there are so many different transferases with different structural requirements. Hence some transferases (looking at you, MGAT2!) are much more promiscuous than others towards chemically modified UDP-GlcNAc analogues.
β οΈ New pre-print just dropped!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Bump-and-hole engineering has served us exquisitely to develop chemical tools that are specific for individual glycosyltransferases. Now, Yu Liu, Saskia Pieters and lots of colleagues have taken the method a step further!
ESBOC, established by Cedric Hassall in 1967, is the oldest chemical biology meeting in Europe (the world?). Meetings are intentionally kept small, with around 50-70 participants, to foster close interactions and in-depth discussions. ESBOC is the European counterpart to Gordon conferences.
AndrΓ© Nadler (Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics)
Antonio Molinaro (UniversitΓ di Napoli Federico II)
Sascha Hoogendoorn (University of Geneva)
Nadja Simeth (Georg-August-UniversitΓ€t GΓΆttingen)
TomΓ‘Ε‘ Pluskal (IOCB Prague)
Craig Markin (University of Manchester)
Emmanuelle Thinon (UniversitΓ© de Bordeaux)
Jeannine Hess (Francis Crick Institute, Kingβs College London)
Our most awesome speaker line-up:
@jeremybaskin.bsky.social (Cornell University)
Valentin Wittmann (University of Konstanz)
Dorothea Fiedler (Leibniz-Institut fΓΌr Mol. Pharmakologie)
Akane Kawamura (Newcastle University)
Mark Rackham (Isomorphic Labs)
Jesus Jimenez-Barbero (CIC bioGUNE, Bilbao)
#chembio and #bioorganic crowd. Mark your calendars for ESBOC 2026, registration opens soon!
www.esboc.org.uk
β±οΈ 27th-30th May 2026
π° The beautiful Schlosshotel Pillnitz GmbH in Dresden/Germany
Check our new venture into drug discovery #glycotime!
The entire paper is supported by (often sub-A resolution) crystal structure magic by @stephcrystallab.bsky.social and Andy Purkiss @crick.ac.uk. My favourite one is of the covalent linkage of WBC10 with Tyr211 - a thing of beauty! Next --> Application!
In parallel, Will performed a covalent, sulfonyl fluoride-targeted fragment screen and found Tyr211 to be especially reactive. Because Tyr211 is around the same binding pocket for our non-covalent inhibitors, we decided to merge these chemotypes. And it worked!
The Bertozzi and Ferguson labs have targeted GALE in the early 2000s (references in the paper!), so we knew it could be drugged. Will did a tour de force fragment screen with colleages @crick.ac.uk at XChem @diamondlightsource.bsky.social. Rounds of iteration got him a good non-covalent inhibitor.
The human UDP-Gal-4-epimerase is important for cellular biosynthesis of UDP-Gal and UDP-GalNAc. Both are important precursors for glycosylation. GALE KO abrogates cellular levels of these metabolites. GALE plays a role in cancer (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31908526/) - so we decided to drug it!
Check out our new preprint "Convergent Lead Discovery Strategies Yield Covalent and Non-covalent Inhibitors of Human UDP-Galactose-4-Epimerase" on Chemrxiv led by Will Browne in close collab with GSK @jtbush.bsky.social
chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr...
Here's a job at my institute that just opened up: Max Planck Director in Biological AI. This is an amazing opportunity -
www.mpi-cbg.de/news-outreac...
Check out our first PhD advert, primarily for enthusiastic students with a chemical/chemoenzymatic synthesis background:
www.verw.tu-dresden.de/StellAus/stelle.asp?id=12186&lang=en&style=cms2
A special Thank You to @crick.ac.uk and @imperialchemistry.bsky.social, all my friends, mentors, colleagues and collaborators for their amazing support throughout the years - we had (and will continue to have) a lot of fun in London, it is a special place!
A huge Thank You to my amazing lab, everybody has been so supportive.
Dresden is an amazingly collaborative place with a unique, multidisciplinary scientific infrastructure. Our lab will be based in the Faculty of Chemistry and Food Chemistry, with lots of interactions and collabs.
π₯³ Thrilled to share that I am starting a new position as W3 Full Professor of Biochemistry at @tudresden.bsky.social. From Aug 2025, the Chemical Glycobiology Lab will continue our mission to generate Chemical Precision Tools for #glycotime in one the most beautiful places in Germany π
π₯ Job alert! We are looking for an enthusiastic PhD candidate in the new Chemical Glycobiology Lab at @tudresden.bsky.social! Master in Chem or similar, experience in organic chem including chemoenzymatic, and most importantly: enthusiasm!
Deadline 8th July:
www.verw.tu-dresden.de/StellAus/ste...
Thank you to our organizers for putting together this program:
@stephanhacker2.bsky.social
Marina Rubini
@borisvauzeilles.bsky.social
@michellefrei17.bsky.social
Hana MacΓΔkovΓ‘ CahovΓ‘
@drglycoben.bsky.social
@mlakemeyer.bsky.social
Shixian Lin
@rubenragg.bsky.social
Meghan Lucas
(4/4)
Great to see the new concept of protein PTMs functionalization published in @chemicalscience.rsc.org! The GlyTACs enable selective degradation of glycoproteins in living cells. Congratulation to Haoyu and Liu. Have a look on the full story here: pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/A... #chembio
