RSC Desktop Seminar with Molecular Omics

Professor Nicki Packer has had an extensive and varied career in biochemical research in both Chemistry and Biological Sciences. She was part of the team that established the Australian Proteome Analysis Facility (APAF) and co-founded Proteome Systems Limited, an Australian biotechnology company in which her group developed a platform of glycoanalytical technology and informatics tools. She is now Professor of Glycoproteomics, Director of the MQ Biomolecular Discovery & Design Research Centre and Consultant to APAF at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. She has gained international and national profile by linking glycomics with the proteomics and bioinformatics approaches to biological functional research.

Nicki’s research focuses on glycomics, the investigation of post-translational modifications of proteins by sugars. Her main research interests lie in the role of glyosylation in different systems, glycoproteins in the innate immune system, cancer glycomics, and the advancement of glycomics technologies. She is also interested in the structure, function, informatics and application of glycans and their conjugates as molecular markers, particularly in their role in cancer, therapeutics and microbial infection.

Manfred Wuhrer received his degree in Biochemistry from Regensburg University (1995) and PhD from Giessen University (1999). In 2003 he established a research project on mass spectrometry glycosylation analysis at Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC), before becoming a professor of Analytics of Biomolecular Interactions at VU University Amsterdam in 2013. In 2015, he returned to LUMC, where he is currently professor of Proteomics and Glycomics and heads the Center for Proteomics and Metabolomics. Wuhrer is also chairman of the Dutch Society for Mass Spectrometry.

His research focuses on the development of glycoanalytical techniques with a particular emphasis on mass spectrometry. These techniques are used to characterise protein glycosylation in various biological and clinical applications.