John Magnani received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and then joined the Laboratory of Biological Pharmacology of the National Institute of Arthritis, Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIADDK) of the National Institutes of Health. He remained at the NIH for ten years, finally serving as a tenured Research Chemist. Dr. Magnani left the NIH in 1988 and helped co-found the U.S. subsidiary of BioCarb and became its Vice President of Research. In 1992, he founded and managed GlycoTech Corp. as its President and CEO. Dr. Magnani is the discoverer of Sialyl Lewisa and its functions. He was the first to identify the binding domain to the selectins common to both Sialyl Lewisa and Sialyl Lewisx and used this information to develop potent selectin inhibitors. During his career, he also identified and characterized many carbohydrate tumor antigens and developed fundamental technology for the identification of functional carbohydrate epitopes. |