Profile
Our Laboratory of Chemical Glycobiology is interested in competitive research in frontier areas in the field of glycobiology, chemical biology, glycoproteomics, glycomics, and carbohydrate-based drug design. I spent post-doctoral stints at (a) ETH, Zurich, Switzerland, on oligosaccharide synthesis, (b) NICHD, NIH, Bethesda, MD, USA, on synthetic carbohydrate conjugate vaccines against Shigella dysenteriae type 1, and (c) metabolic glycan engineering of human stem cells and carbohydrate-based anti-cancer drugs. Since 2007, we have established a competitive research program on glycobiology, chemical biology, glycoimmunology, and glyco-neurobiology. Our goal is to develop small molecules analogues of carbohydrates and demonstrate their application for cell engineering, modulation of tumor glycocalyx, inhibition of O-glycosylation, non-invasive engineering of glycoconjugates in brain in vivo, and auto-immune disease models.
Current Focus Areas
(a) Metabolic glycan engineering for modulation of cell adhesion and migration; (b) Comprehensive mapping of O-glycans on CD-antigens using glycoproteomics, (c) Development of inhibitors of O-glycosylation, (d) Role of glycosylation in melanogenesis and melanoma, (e) click-chemistry based approaches for the in vivo imaging of mycobacteria for studies on host-pathogen interactions
Selected Publications
Wang SS, Solar VD, Yu X, Antonopoulos A, Friedman AE, Agarwal K, Garg M, Ahmed SM, Addhya A, Nasirikenari M, Lau JT, Dell A, Haslam SM, Sampathkumar SG, Neelamegham S. Efficient inhibition of O-glycan biosynthesis using the hexosamine analog Ac5GalNTGc. Cell Chem Biol. 2021 May 20;28(5):699-710.e5. doi: 10.1016/j.chembiol.2021.01.017. Epub 2021 Feb 19. PMID: 33609441; PMCID: PMC8140985.
Shajahan A, Parashar S, Goswami S, Ahmed SM, Nagarajan P, Sampathkumar SG. Carbohydrate-Neuroactive Hybrid Strategy for Metabolic Glycan Engineering of the Central Nervous System in Vivo. J Am Chem Soc. 2017 Jan 18;139(2):693-700. doi: 10.1021/jacs.6b08894. Epub 2017 Jan 5. PMID: 27997162.
Agarwal K, Kaul R, Garg M, Shajahan A, Jha SK, Sampathkumar SG. Inhibition of mucin-type O-glycosylation through metabolic processing and incorporation of N-thioglycolyl-D-galactosamine peracetate (Ac5GalNTGc). J Am Chem Soc. 2013 Sep 25;135(38):14189-97. doi: 10.1021/ja405189k. Epub 2013 Sep 16. PMID: 23987472.
Dwivedi V, Saini P, Tasneem A, Agarwal K, Sampathkumar SG. Differential inhibition of mucin-type O-glycosylation (MTOG) induced by peracetyl N-thioglycolyl-d-galactosamine (Ac5GalNTGc) in myeloid cells. Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2018 Nov 17;506(1):60-65. doi: 10.1016/j.bbrc.2018.08.131. Epub 2018 Oct 15. PMID: 30336974.
Sampathkumar SG, Li AV, Jones MB, Sun Z, Yarema KJ. Metabolic installation of thiols into sialic acid modulates adhesion and stem cell biology. Nat Chem Biol. 2006 Mar;2(3):149-52. doi: 10.1038/nchembio770. Epub 2006 Feb 12. PMID: 16474386.