Forging Translational Glycobiologists: Intermeshing Glycoscience Training and Clinical Education

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ABSTRACT Currently there are very few individuals that can place clinical medicine within the framework of glycoscience, and vice versa. The key to bridging this translational chasm is to support the development of scientists with requisite interdisciplinary knowledge and experience by providing training in glycosciences concomitantly with education in human biology, altogether framed by an appreciation of human diseases and clinical urgency. This application addresses this need by pioneering a multi-disciplinary career development program in glycosciences within the context of clinical medicine that will create a cadre of “Translational Glycobiologists,” individuals who will perform glycoscience-based inquiry inspired by medical necessity. Fundamentally, this goal will be accomplished by equipping Program Scholars with the requisite intellectual background and the necessary lab skills in the glycosciences, together with an in-depth appreciation of clinical issues. To this end, we will build partnerships between experienced glycoscience researchers and clinicians within the Harvard teaching hospitals to nurture Program Scholar training in glycoscience principles and technical skills integrated with clinical knowledge and practice. The combination of Principal Investigators dedicated to this goal (Drs. Sackstein, Chaikof, and Cummings), together with the assembled faculty and the extraordinary hospital resources, makes this program ideal for career development in Translational Glycobiology. By design, the program capitalizes on the long tradition of translational research within the Brigham & Women’s Hospital, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the Massachusetts General Hospital, the Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, as well as within the greater Harvard Medical School and Harvard University. Through coursework and seminars, Program Scholars will gain glycoscience knowledge with concomitant development of technical knowledge and skills in both primary laboratory settings and workshops. To ensure development across both scientific and clinical spectrums, each Program Scholar will be jointly mentored by a Research Mentor for lab-based project-oriented glycoscientific training and a Clinical Mentor for hospital-based clinical education. In addition, each Program Scholar will have a dedicated Career Mentor that will further support the Scholar transition towards career independence. Scholar appointments will be for two years (maximum three years), and we anticipate a total of ten Scholars over the duration of the funding period, with four Scholars being junior faculty clinicians and six Scholars being senior post-doctoral fellows. We believe that this unique combination of glycoscience education, laboratory instruction, clinical exposures, and mentoring will launch a cadre of biomedical investigators that will accelerate the growth of glycoscience, and, more importantly, will create needed glycoscience-based breakthroughs that will transform clinical care for disorders of heart, lung, blood, and sleep, and for many, many other diseases.