Recent Trends in Carbohydrate Chemistry: Synthesis, Structure and Function of Carbohydrates

Professor of Organic Chemistry since 1984; Professor of Carbohydrate Chemistry in the Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon (3rd year course of the Graduation in Chemistry since 2001), editor of the RSC book series Carbohydrate Chemistry – Chemical and Biological Approaches (since 2008); Guest editor of Wiley – Eur J Org Chem., vol 2013(8) and the book Carbohydrate Mimics (1998); of Springer - Topics in Current Chemistry, vols 294, 295 in 2010; of DeGruyter – Pure and Applied Chemistry (vol 89(7) in2017 and vol 88(4) in2016); Ph.D. in Carbohydrate Chemistry (TU Graz, Austria); Expert in monosaccharide chemistry (deoxygenation, Wittig olefination, domino reactions, C-glycosylation, nucleoside synthesis, glycomedicinal chemistry), with more than 150 publications in the area, 15 book chapters and 10 granted patents.

Bjørn E. Christensen holds a Dr. philos. degree in biotechnology from NTNU - Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway, where he also had a career as research scientist until 2002 when he became a full professor. His research field is polysaccharide engineering and includes studies of macromolecular characterisation and structure-function relationships in among other alginates, chitosans, pectins, xanthan and β-1,3-glucans. He has also been visiting scientist/professor at Montana State University, USA (1985), Osaka Prefecture University, Japan (2009), Cermav-CNRS Grenoble, France (2010) and University of Bordeaux, France (2016).

Full professor, former director of the Institute of Chemistry and head of the Department of Organic Chemistry of the University of Debrecen, Hungary. Serves as an editorial board member for Carbohydrate Research, and as guest editor for special issues of Carbohydrate Research, Mini-Reviews in Medicinal Chemsitry, Molecules, Topics in Heterocyclic Chemistry. Research interests include synthetic carbohydrate chemistry directed to C-glycosyl compounds, anomeric-spirocycles, glycals, exo-glycals and their derivatives; development of synthetic methodology involving radicals and carbenes; synthesis of glycosidase and glycogen phosphorylase inhibitors as potential antidiabetics, study of their structure-activity relationships; synthesis of glycomimetics and glycopeptidomimetics.

Dr. Paul Kosma is a full professor at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, Austria. He also serves as head of the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Deputy of the Department of Chemistry. His areas of expertise include organic synthesis, NMR spectroscopy, complex carbohydrates, Natural Product Synthesis and Chemistry of Triterpenes. He has published hundreds of journal articles and conference proceedings, served on the editorial boards of international journals, chaired a dozen international conferences, and supervised 35 theses in his career.

Roberto Adamo obtained his PhD in Pharmaceutical Science from the University of Catania (Italy) in 2003, with a thesis on the synthesis of biologically relevant inositols. He was post-doctoral fellow at the NIH in Bethesda (USA), under the supervision of Dr. P. Kovac, and then in the group of Prof. J. P. Kamerling at the Utrecht University (The Netherlands). In 2007 he joined Novartis Vaccines where he was later apoointed Head of the Carbohydrate Chemistry Laboratory, and Leader of the Conjugation & Synthesis Platform. Following the company acquisition by GSK he became Preclinical Representative Leader of the Conjugation Platform. His research interests focus on the synthesis of glycans, glycoconjugates and glyconanoparticles to be used for carbohydrate-based therapeutics. He has been recently appointed Conjugation Technology Platform Leader at GSK, covering chemical and glycoengineering approaches for glycoconjugate vaccines. He is associate editor in the Glycoconjugate Journal and Coordinator of the EU network Glycovax.