The Glycobiology Significant Achievement Award is given annually by Oxford University Press (publisher of Glycobiology) to honor new or mid-career scientists who have made key discoveries during their early careers with the potential to have a substantial impact on the glycoscience community.

Oxford is delighted to present the 2020 Glycobiology Significant Achievement Award to Dr. Salomé Pinho, who is group leader at the Institute for Research and Innovation in Health (i3S) and Institute of Molecular Pathology and Immunology of University of Porto (IPATIMUP), Portugal. The award will be given to Dr. Pinho during the Annual Meeting of the Society for Glycobiology, which will be an online event this year.

Dr. Pinho has made several significant discoveries in the glycosciences. In general, her work has focused on understanding how glycans mediate key cellular and molecular processes with impacts on immune tolerance, autoimmunity and cancer.

During her postdoctoral work in cancer glycobiology, Dr. Pinho reported the first E-cadherin N-glycan mutant found to be associated with poor survival rates in gastric cancer patients, leading to the evaluation of glycans as biomarkers of poor survival in gastric cancer.

Building upon the discovery of branched N-glycans as pro-invasive structures with prognostic applications in cancer patients, Dr. Pinho went on to demonstrate the immunoregulatory properties of those glycans in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). Dr. Pinho led the characterization of the intestinal T cell glycosylation profile in Ulcerative Colitis patients. This work demonstrated the existence of a deficiency in branched N-glycans, which was associated with T cell activation, disease severity, and a predictor of the therapeuitc response in IBD patients. The establishment of MGAT5 glycoengineered mouse models combined with human-derived ex vivo methodological approaches allowed her to propose metabolic supplementation with glycans as a novel immunomodulatory modality to treat IBD. This set the stage for an unprecedented clinical trial coordinated by Dr. Pinho designed to test the clinical and therapeutic efficacy of glycans in IBD patients. Thus, Dr. Pinho’s line of research on the glycoimmunology of chronic inflammatory processes has been vastly successful and is highly recognized for its clinical translational character.

Oxford is proud to honor Dr. Pinho as this year’s Glycobiology Significant Achievement Awardee.