2022 MCP/ASBMB Lectureship Award
Dr. Carlito Lebrilla 


The 2022 Molecular and Cellular Proteomics (MCP) / American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) Lectureship Award will be presented to Dr. Carlito Lebrilla during this year’s Society for Glycobiology Annual meeting. The MCP journal 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. Lebrilla is a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Davis where he formerly served as Chair of the Department. Dr. Lebrilla received his BS in Chemistry from the University of California, Irvine and his PhD in Physical Organic Chemistry from the University of California, Berkley. This was followed by gas-phase chemistry research at the Technical University in Berlin as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow and a NSF-NATO Fellow.  He returned to the University of California, Irvine as a President’s Fellow studying Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry before moving to the University of California Davis in 1989 to establish his own laboratory.

During his independent career, Dr. Lebrilla has been a pioneer in the use of mass spectrometry to analyze glycans and glycoconjugates. This has resulted in more than 400 peer-reviewed publications, recognition as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and service on multiple mass spectrometry-related editorial boards including the board of Molecular and Cellular Proteomics. Dr. Lebrilla is also an entrepreneur and has been the co-founder of multiple start-up companies.

Dr. Lebrilla is well-known for tackling technically challenging questions related to human health. A major long-term focus area in his lab has been developing and applying glycomic approaches aimed at identifying and validating early biomarkers of disease, specifically ovarian, breast, and prostate cancer. His laboratory is also a leader in characterizing the components of human milk, including oligosaccharides, in efforts to identify bioactive molecules and develop improved nutrient supplements. For his long-term commitment to studying glycoconjugates by cutting-edge mass spectrometry, Dr. Carlito Lebrilla was chosen by the editorial leadership of the MCP to receive the 2022 Lectureship Award.