The research in the Wu Laboratory integrates synthetic chemistry with biochemistry to explore the relevance of glycosylation in human disease. The glycome, defined as the full complement of glycans that a cell produces, is involved in a variety of physiological processes, including angiogenesis, fertilization, stem cell development and neuronal development. Changes in the glycome have also been shown to mark the onset of cancer and inflammation. The wealth of biological information encoded in the glycome has motivated researchers to develop methods for its retrieval.

Produced by the secondary metabolism rather than encoded in the genome, glycans are assembled in a step-wise fashion by multiple enzymes and thus by multiple genes. Therefore, genetic and biochemical tools alone cannot be used to define all aspects of the glycome. Rather, many complementary approaches must be applied in parallel in order to assemble a picture of the glycome both from the “bottom up” and from the “top down”.

The major goal of our lab is to develop chemical biology platforms to image and characterize the glycome in the immune system and in tumors. We are also interested in chemical tools that can be used to selectively enrich glycoproteins for their molecular identification. These new tools will facilitate the discovery of new biomarkers for diseases, and assist in the development of clinical diagnostics and therapeutics.

Key biological questions we are interested include: How does cell-surface glycosylation change during immune-cell activation and what is the underlying mechanism? How do tumor cells exploit glycan-lectin interactions to suppress immune-cell activation within the tumor microenvironment? How to boost activities of leukocytes by using small-molecule probes to control cell-surface glycan mediated signaling?