Carolyn Bertozzi

Carolyn Bertozzi, PhD, Director, Chem-H; Ann T. and Robert M. Bass Professor, Department of Chemistry, Stanford University School of Humanities & Sciences; Professor (by courtesy), Department of Chemical and Systems Biology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute. 

Research Description: For over 23 years, Dr. Bertozzi’s lab has worked at the intersection of chemistry and glycobiology. Her research includes development of chemical transformations tailored for living systems, a field termed bioorthogonal chemistry, as well new therapeutic modalities targeting disease-relevant glycans and glycan-binding proteins. Her lab also develops mass spectrometry-based methods for glycoproteomics and technologies for disease diagnostics. Her lab is fully equipped for chemical synthesis, molecular and cell biology, mass spectrometry, fluorescence imaging, and work with BSL3 organisms. Dr. Bertozzi published a study describing ultrasensitive methods for detecting antibodies in serum using a method called ‘agglutination-PCR’ (Tsai et al., 2016 PMC4819452). This includes detection of T1D autoantibodies at concentrations 3 orders of magnitude than standard assays like ELISAs. She and her colleagues formed a company, Enable Biosciences, that is developing this test for early detection of T1D, which was funded by an NIH SIBR award. As well, Dr. Bertozzi developed a strategy for targeted degradation of extracellular proteins which she is translating into immune modulatory therapies for condisions like T1D. Dr. Bertozzi’s membership in the SDRC is aligned with the center mission to attract, support and enable established distinguished investigators to diabetes research. 

Selected relevant publications (Stanford DRC Members in BOLD):

  1.  Wei W, Riley NM, Yang AC, Kim JT, Terrell SM, Li VL, Garcia-Contreras M, Bertozzi CR, Long JZ. Cell type-selective secretome profiling in vivo. Nat Chem Biol. 2021 Mar;17(3):326-334. doi: 10.1038/s41589-020-00698-y. PMID: 33199915; PMCID: PMC7904581. 

  2. Cortez FJ, Gebhart D, Robinson PV, Seftel D, Pourmandi N, Owyoung J, Bertozzi CR, Wilson DM, Maahs DM, Buckingham BA, Mills JR, Roforth MM, Pittock SJ, McKeon A, Page K, Wolf WA, Sanda S, Speake C, Greenbaum CJ, Tsai CT. Sensitive detection of multiple islet autoantibodies in type 1 diabetes using small sample volumes by agglutination-PCR. PLoS One. 2020 Nov 13;15(11):e0242049. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0242049. PMID: 33186361; PMCID: PMC7665791. 

  3. Zhou MN, Delaveris CS, Kramer JR, Kenkel JA, Engleman EG, Bertozzi CR. N Carboxyanhydride Polymerization of Glycopolypeptides That Activate Antigen-Presenting Cells through Dectin-1 and Dectin-2. Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2018 Mar 12;57(12):3137-3142. doi: 10.1002/anie.201713075. PMID: 29370452; PMCID: PMC5842139. 

  4. Aebersold R, Agar JN, Amster IJ, Baker MS, Bertozzi CR, Boja ES, Costello CE, …., Snyder MP, Thomas PM, Uhlén M, Van Eyk JE, Vidal M, Walt DR, White FM, Williams ER, Wohlschlager T, Wysocki VH, Yates NA, Young NL, Zhang B. How many human proteoforms are there? Nat Chem Biol. 2018 Feb 14;14(3):206-214. doi: 10.1038/nchembio.2576. PMID: 29443976; PMCID: PMC5837046.