Winner: 2024 Chemistry Biology Interface early career Prize: Norman Heatley Award
Dr Benjamin Schumann
Imperial College London and the Francis Crick Institute
For the creative use of chemistry-centred tools to provide valuable insights into glycan biology.
Every single living cell in our bodies is covered by a layer of sugars that is normally the first thing a virus, bacterium, or a neighbouring cell interacts with. The structures of these sugars change when a cell changes its connections with the environment (for instance, when developing into a tumour). Understanding how these processes happen is essential to make better drugs and diagnostic markers for cancer.
One such approach was equipping sugars with chemical functionalities that allow scientists to visualise them, for instance, by attaching a fluorescent molecule for microscopy. This paradigm-shifting ‘bioorthogonal chemistry’ led to the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Bertozzi, Meldal and Sharpless. Dr Schumann’s team uses bioorthogonal chemistry to make tools that are helping us to understand sugars. They develop molecules that tell us exactly how the sugar-building enzymes work – what they do and which sugars they build – out of the millions of structures that are found on a cell at any given point in time.
Since many of these enzymes are important in diseases, such as neuronal disorders or cancer, the team’s chemical tools are a promising means of understanding what goes wrong in such conditions.
Biography
Dr Benjamin Schumann studied biochemistry in Tübingen, where he gained an early appreciation for the power of chemistry to unravel biological processes. He added a keen interest in glycosciences during undergraduate work with Ten Feizi and during his PhD with Peter H Seeberger at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin and Potsdam. There, he synthesised oligosaccharides as vaccine candidates against pathogenic bacteria, applying his own compounds in vivo and in vitro. Ben moved to Stanford University to work with Carolyn R Bertozzi as an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Feodor Lynen Fellow. There, he learned how bioorthogonal sugars can be applied to address questions in modern, quantitative biology. He moved to London in 2018 to start his independent career as a group leader at the Francis Crick Institute and Imperial College London. Mindful that the best (and most fun) way to do science is as part of a diverse team, Ben is extremely grateful to his team members, his family, colleagues, and mentors for making this work possible.
Q&A
How did you first become interested in chemistry?
Growing up in Germany, I learnt most subjects at school all the way until the final exams. My interest in chemistry was relatively modest until the last two years when I was fortunate to have great teachers in both chemistry and biology teaching organic chemistry and metabolism. That was when I decided to study biochemistry at a place that also featured a thorough chemistry education. The combination was perfect for me because I learnt to "speak both languages".
Tell us about somebody who has inspired or mentored you in your career.
A lot of people have supported me throughout my career and are still doing so now. The beautiful thing about the UK chemical biology and glycan communities is that everybody is so supportive. I would not dare to write a full list, on the risk of forgetting someone. They know who they are, though, and they know that I will be eternally grateful!
The people I worked with and who introduced me to the glycosciences (Peter, Carolyn, Ten) have probably had the biggest impact on shaping me as a scientist and a group leader.
From them, I have learnt that being committed to good science and being kind are not mutually exclusive – in fact, these attributes go together very well!
I want to make a point about having supportive colleagues and line managers at your institution to guide you through the process.
There are people that I can turn to for pretty much any question I have. I was also fortunate to start my job at the same time as colleagues who are great friends and collaborators – Louise Walport (Crick/Imperial) and Stacy Malaker (Yale), to name two of them. This meant that none of us was alone in the new roles, and we could help each other out.
What motivates you?
There is a particular type of project that I like. I want to do new things, either making compounds that nobody has made before or using them in ways that we could not until now. But that doesn't mean that innovation has to be complicated. Sometimes, small discoveries can open up an entirely new field, which is as gratifying for me as for my lab members!
What advice would you give to a young person considering a career in chemistry?
The best driving force for me is enthusiasm to do cool, new things. Without a healthy dose of enthusiasm, I would not be able to do my job well, and I am trying to convey this mindset to students.
I would also advise young people to always want to know more.
Whether for exams, grant applications or conference talks, I have always tried to know as much as I could about the subject. Being a student is a period when you might have time to read an entire textbook about, say, immunology or frontier molecular orbital theory. You might not have that time later, so do it now!
Can you tell us about a scientific development on the horizon that you are excited about?
Collectively, the field is getting to a point where we will be able to study complicated biological processes in situ (as they happen) – not one technology alone is going to get us there, but whatever we do, chemical tools are certainly going to play a central role.
Why is chemistry important?
Chemistry is everything and everywhere. The ability to form a hypothesis in theory, test that hypothesis through experiments and translate the outcomes to processes that are important to humanity is beautiful.
What has been a highlight for you (either personally or in your career)?
There are so many. Personally, certainly our wedding day and the days our kids were born. But really, every day I get to spend with my family.
Career-wise, every time a lab member is successful in something – whatever it is – is a highlight that trumps everything else.
It is my job to help with the troubleshooting to make sure that they get there.
What has been a challenge for you (either personally or in your career)?
The time between the end of my postdoc and starting my lab. My very pregnant wife flew to Germany with my daughter to stay with my in-laws while I worked at Stanford for a few more weeks to wrap up projects. I wanted to finish my work, so I was staying late and basically living out of the vending machine. This was probably scientifically the most intense time of my life, but it was absolutely worth it and brilliant colleagues made it easier.
When I started in London, the family was still in Berlin, and I travelled there every weekend.
After a few months, when all of us were very sleep-deprived, they finally came to London. These time periods taught me that a career is not always straightforward, however well things may work. But getting to the other side is worth the effort.
What does good research culture look like/mean to you?
When you start a lab, you have a vague idea what kind of lab culture you want to establish but no idea how to implement it. Leadership courses help a lot, such as, in my case, the EMBO course. I defined the core values that are most important to me and without which I wouldn't see a point of running a lab. These instances brought some clarity in the initial confusion and helped me clarify what kind of lab I wanted to have.
I decided early on to invest a lot of time in making sure that the lab atmosphere is supportive and cohesive – ideally, people with different personalities complement each other so that everybody brings something to the table. When I look at the lab, I am proud of how well they get along with each other.
A good research culture also means helping people excel at what they do. For instance, it is my responsibility to guide students into having a PhD-worthy thesis at the end, which means that there are challenges to be overcome, which can be fun if it's done as a team.
Why do you think collaboration and teamwork are important in science?
To me, working in a multidisciplinary environment is fun because I not only constantly learn about new developments but I also get to think about how our tools can make a difference. A question that I like to ask is, "What would you like to be able to do?" The answers I get tell me where the field is going and what the hot topics will be in the next years.
Being part of a team means contributing meaningfully to a common goal. As long as everybody takes part, we can progress much faster and have much more fun while doing it.
What is your favourite element?
Not an element, but a formula for glyco-people: C8H15NO6!