Zoom Transcription: https://otter.ai/s/Zw26w1ivQQ60-OPzQh8B8Q

Gordan Lauc and Daniel Bojar discuss the role of glycans in aging and COVID-19.

Daniel Bojar, 2020 Foresight Fellow in Health & Longevity recently gave this Foresight presentation on “The Dark Matter in Biology” and its role in COVID-19 initiating this discussion.

We are honored to be joined by Professor Gordan Lauc, whose extensive research on glycans inter alia resulted in technology that is the basis of the GlycanAge test of biological age. 

Both give a short intro presentation before we open it up for discussion.

Dr Gordan Lauc is Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry and founder and CEO of Genos Ltd. He graduated molecular biology at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Science in 1992, and obtained PhD in Biochemistry and the University of Zagreb in 1995. He got his postdoctoral training at the Institute for Medical Physics and Biophysics in Münster and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Since 1993 he is employed at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry in Zagreb. Between 1998 and 2010 he was also part-time employed at the University of Osijek School of Medicine where he founded DNA laboratory for the identification of war victims and also served as Vice-Dean for Science between 2001 and 2005. Dr Lauc is author of over 100 research papers published in international journals and six international patents. He was invited to lecture at numerous international conferences, elected for visiting professor at the Johns Hopkins University and in 2011 also inducted in the prestigious Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars. If 2012 he was appointed Honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh and Adjunct Professor at the Edith Cowan University in Perth.

He chaired a number of conferences, including the “European Science Foundation Exploratory Workshop on Glycoscience” which resulted in the creation of the “European Glycoscience Forum”. Professor Lauc was a chairman of the committee that prepared Croatian National Action plan for the increased investment in research in development (2007), and was a member of the National Science Council between 2009 and 2013 and also and President of the National Council for Natural Sciences. He is a President-elect of the International Glycoscience Organization and member of the Steering Committee of the European Glycoscience Forum.


Dr. Daniel Bojar is the2020 Foresight Fellow in Health & Longevity. Daniel’s background in structural biology, strengthened by a B.Sc. in biochemistry (University of Tuebingen, Germany, 2014) and a M.Sc. in biophysics (ETH Zurich, Switzerland, 2016) with distinction, enabled him to understand biological processes down to the atomic level. During his doctoral work with Dr. Martin Fussenegger at ETH Zurich, Daniel employed these fundamental insights to genetically re-engineer human cells for therapeutic purposes. Creatively using the principles of synthetic biology, he designed new proteins with a dedicated function – such as a novel caffeine receptor – and used these intricate tools to develop potent new cell-based therapies for diabetes mellitus and Parkinson’s disease. 
 
Further, Daniel was distinguished by several prestigious fellowships, such as the Excellence Scholarship and Opportunity Program of ETH Zurich and by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, as well as in the form of a Selected Young Scientist at the 68th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, an honor extended to the 600 most promising biomedical scientists worldwide. As a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. James J. Collins at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, Daniel harnesses the potency of cutting edge machine learning techniques to elucidate the biological functions of glycans since September 2019. 
 
Often described as the “third language of life” after DNA and proteins, glycans are by far the most complex and plastic biopolymer in humans. While these macromolecules are crucial to every human disease, glycobiology is still a predominantly experimental, and severely neglected, area of research. Daniel was the first researcher to devise, develop, and apply methods derived from artificial intelligence to glycans and begin to tame their astounding complexity. His research could therefore pave the way for exciting new insights and novel therapies for grueling human diseases.