The 2020 Molecular and Cellular Proteomics (MCP) / American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) Lectureship Award will be presented to Catherine E. Costello during this year’s Society for Glycobiology Annual meeting. MCP is a journal that was created in 2001 to address the growing needs of the proteomics community. The MCP/ASBMB award was established in 2013 to honor scientists that have been at the forefront of the emerging field of glycomics and glycoproteomics.

Dr. Costello earned both the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Organic Chemistry from Georgetown University. After postdoctoral training with Professor Klaus Biemann at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), she served as the Associate Director of the NIH Research Resource for Mass Spectrometry at MIT for 20 years. In 1994, she joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine, where she established the Center for Biomedical Mass Spectrometry. In 2013, she was named a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor.

Dr. Costello was among the first to develop and recognize the utility of various and valuable types of mass spectrometry for use in the characterization of glycoconjugates.

She was one of the first investigators to apply FAB-MS to peptide analysis and to employ FAB-tandem MS to characterize lipids, permethylated glycans and glycolipids. In 1988, she reported a summary of the ion types observed in the FAB-MS and collision induced decomposition (CID) MS/MS spectra of glycosphingolipids, glycopeptides, glycosides and carbohydrates. The variety of product ion types resulting from the cleavage of linkages within carbohydrate moieties prompted the scientific community to adopt her systematic nomenclature to define these ions with respect to spectra recorded in either the positive- or negative-ion mode during both MS and MS/MS experiments. This report has been highly cited, more than 2600 times according to PubMed. Dr. Costello later extended the methodology to include ESI- and MALDI-MS and electron-based dissociation modes. In summary, she has contributed to advances in carbohydrate molecular weight profiling, sequencing, linkage characterization, and branching data derived from trace amounts of biological samples.

Dr. Costello has received numerous awards and honors, including the 2009 Thomson Medal from the International Mass Spectrometry Foundation (IMSF), the 2010 Field and Franklin Award from the American Chemical Society (ACS), and the 2017 Award for Distinguished Contributions to Mass Spectrometry from the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS), as well as the 2019 Lifetime Achievement in Proteomics Award from the U.S. Human Proteome Organization. She is a Fellow of the ACS and American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has served as president of ASMS (2002-04), International HUPO (2011-12) and the IMSF (2014-18).