About

Our history

We are a small business with 9 years of experience in the analytical glycosciences.

Our director, Chris Ashwood, PhD, has recent experience in managing and completing glycomics projects, serving for two years as the Glycomics Core Director at the Harvard Center for Glycoscience in Boston, Massachusetts, USA before returning back to Australia to establish Protea Glycosciences.

Chris in front of a Velos Pro MS

Our unique experience

Glycomics is rarely structure-oriented, and that has limited the impact of research in this area. Protea Glycosciences is one of the few analytical companies where glycan structure comes first.

To achieve this, we implement advanced liquid chromatography – mass spectrometry (LC-MS) technologies for specific glycan structure quantitation. These workflows have evolved over our 8 years of experience, ensuring these techniques remain state-of-the-art.

Where we are

We are based in Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
Despite this, we provide services to clients based anywhere in the world.

Selected publications

  • Doshi, M. B. et al. Disruption of sugar nucleotide clearance is a therapeutic vulnerability of cancer cells. Nature. 623, 625-632. Pubmed.
  • McKenna, M. K. et al. Novel banana lectin CAR-T cells to target pancreatic tumors and tumor-associated stroma. Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer 11 (2023). PubMed
  • Xu, Y. et al. CRISPR screens in Drosophila cells identify Vsg as a Tc toxin receptor. Nature 610, 349-355 (2022). PubMed
  • Ashwood, C., et al. Reference glycan structure libraries of primary human cardiomyocytes and pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes reveal cell-type and culture stage-specific glycan phenotypes. J. Mol. Cell. Cardiol. 139, 33–46 (2020). PubMed
  • Rojas-Macias, M. A. et al. Towards a standardized bioinformatics infrastructure for N- and O-glycomics. Nature Communications 10, (2019). PubMed
  • Ashwood, C., Pratt, B., MacLean, B. X., Gundry, R. L. & Packer, N. H. Standardization of PGC-LC-MS-based glycomics for sample specific glycotyping. Analyst 144, 3601–3612 (2019). PubMed
  • Ashwood, C., Lin, C.-H., Thaysen-Andersen, M. & Packer, N. H. Discrimination of Isomers of Released N- and O-Glycans Using Diagnostic Product Ions in Negative Ion PGC-LC-ESI-MS/MS. Journal of The American Society for Mass Spectrometry 29, 1194–1209 (2018). PubMed
  • Ashwood, C., Abrahams, J. L., Nevalainen, H. & Packer, N. H. Enhancing structural characterisation of glucuronidated O-linked glycans using negative mode ion trap-HCD mass spectrometry. Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry 31, 851–858 (2017). PubMed