Professor Xi Chen wins Carbohydrate Research Award for Creativity in Carbohydrate Chemistry 2013

The 2013 Carbohydrate Research Award for Creativity in Carbohydrate Chemistry has been won by Professor Xi Chen of the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Davis.

Professor Chen’s group explores the synthesis and application of carbohydrates and glycoconjugates including those containing natural carbohydrate post-glycosylational modifications and non-natural functionalities. They have developed efficient one-pot multienzyme (OPME) systems for high-yield synthesis of sugar nucleotides, oligosaccharides, polysaccharides, glycolipids, and glycopeptides. These compounds have been used to elucidate the roles of carbohydrates in cancer, inflammation, immunology, as well as bacterial and viral infection. Notable recent achievements include the generation of sialoside libraries for glycan microarray studies, the design and the synthesis of selective inhibitors against bacterial or human sialidases, the creation of sialyltransferase mutants with decreased sialidase and reduced donor hydrolysis activities, the discover of bacterial sialyltransferases that can use glycolipid and glycoproteins as substrates, and the synthesis of carbohydrate-based cancer markers and cancer vaccines.

XiChen