Date: Sunday, February 15, 2026
Time: 10:00 a.m.– 11:30 a.m.
Location: Auditorium 0215 between Buildings 2 and 3 and Zoom
As part of the current promotion cycle of the University, Associate Professor Jasmeen Merzaban is being considered for promotion to Full Professor of Bioscience. A requirement of this process is the delivery of a technical colloquium. This presentation will highlight Prof. Merzaban’s research interests and scientific achievements.
The First Hello: Decoding and Rewiring the Glycan Handshake in Cell Communication
Abstract
This talk will spotlight a crucial yet underappreciated frontier of biomedicine – glycobiology – revealing how glycans, the complex sugars on cell surfaces, govern the critical first moments of cellular contact, opening new pathways for diagnosis and therapy.
From the first moment a cell navigates its environment, it speaks a language of sugar. This seminar focuses on the initial, decisive contact between cells in vascular flow and the endothelium: The Glycan Handshake. My lab has been dedicated to decoding the exquisite language of this molecular greeting and rewiring it for therapeutic ends. I will share how this fundamental understanding is allowing us to intervene in cellular communication: to improve hematopoietic stem cell engraftment for treating blood disorders, to decode cancers by their unique glycan signatures, to design inhibitors that block cancer adhesion, and more.
The talk will begin by exploring the core science that enables this handshake, unlocked by combining biochemical and cell biology approaches with advanced single-molecule imaging techniques. I will then describe how we engineer these interactions to guide therapeutic cells to the bone marrow, decipher signature patterns for cancer classification, and design inhibitors and activators to manipulate cell migration – precursors for future drug development. Finally, we will look to the future, examining how cells send exosomal envoys as advanced messengers and the nascent frontier of GlycoRNA, the hidden script that may also influence the conversation.
This is the science of connection, and it begins with the first, sweet hello.
Bio
Professor Jasmeen Merzaban is a pioneering glycobiologist and a founding faculty member at KAUST, where she established the university’s first research program in cell biology. Her work is dedicated to decoding and rewiring the “glycan handshake”— the essential language of cellular adhesion and communication. Following her PhD in Experimental Medicine at the University of British Columbia, where she studied the emigration of immune cells from the bloodstream into tissues, Jasmeen completed postdoctoral training at the Harvard Institutes of Medicine.
Jasmeen is deeply committed to advancing translational science by forging vital links between fundamental discovery and clinical need through cross-disciplinary collaborations, as evidenced by more than 60 authorships. She has been a dedicated mentor of over 30 PhD and Master’s students; her trainees, including recent PhD graduates who received the Forbes 30 Under 30 and L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science awards, embody her commitment to nurturing the next generation of scientists and championing a collaborative, inclusive vision for scientific impact.