Institute of Biological Chemistry, Academia Sinica

Research

Sialic acids are a family of acidic sugars, abundantly expressed by all vertebrates and also by some bacteria. The goals of our laboratory are two-fold:

1. to understand how interactions between sialic acids and endogenous sialic acid-binding proteins regulate physiological processes in mammals,
2. to utilize the knowledge to improve human health.

Our current focus is a family of sialic acid-binding proteins called Siglecs, most of which are expressed in the immune system. Our recent research has revealed that polymorphisms of some Siglecs likely have influence on human diseases and clinical conditions. We are at present trying to obtain deeper mechanistic insight into the molecular and physiological functions of Siglecs, and to reveal connections of Siglec polymorphisms and some other diseases, in hope that these studies will eventually enable us to develop diagnostic methods and/or treatments for the diseases in which sialic acids and Siglecs play some roles.

Degrees and Positions Held

• 1998   Ph.D., Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo
• 1995   M.S., Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo
• 1993   B.S., Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry, School of Science, The University of Tokyo

• 2013 – present   Associate Research Fellow, Institute of Biological Chemistry, Academia Sinica
• 2011 – 2013   Team Leader, RIKEN (Japan)
• 2009 – 2011   Specially Appointed Associate Professor, Osaka University (Japan)
• 2003 – 2009   Research Scientist, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (Japan)
• 1998 – 2003   Post-doctoral fellow, University of California at San Diego (USA)

Selected Publications

Roles of Siglecs in neurodegenerative diseases. 
Siew JJ, Chern Y, Khoo KH, Angata T 
Molecular Aspects of Medicine (2023)

Phosphoproteomics Reveals the Role of Constitutive KAP1 Phosphorylation by B-cell Receptor Signaling in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. 
Wu JL, Wu HY, Wu SJ, Tsai HY, Weng SH, Lin KT, Lin LI, Yao CY, Zamanova M, Lee YY, Angata T, Tien HF, Chen YJ, Lin KI 
Molecular Cancer Research (2022)

Molecular Basis and Role of Siglec-7 Ligand Expression on Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia B Cells. 
Chang LY, Liang SY, Lu SC, Tseng HC, Tsai HY, Tang CJ, Sugata M, Chen YJ, Chen YJ, Wu SJ, Lin KI, Khoo KH, Angata T 
Frontiers in Immunology (2022)

Sugar nucleotide regeneration system for the synthesis of Bi- and triantennary N-glycans and exploring their activities against siglecs. 
Anwar MT, Kawade SK, Huo YR, Adak AK, Sridharan D, Kuo YT, Fan CY, Wu HR, Lee YS, Angata T, Lin CC 
European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry (2022)

Recent Progress in the Methodologies to Identify Physiological Ligands of Siglecs. 
Jiang HS, Zhuang SC, Lam CH, Chang LY, Angata T 
Frontiers in Immunology (2021)

Siglec-15: a potential regulator of osteoporosis, cancer, and infectious diseases. 
Angata T 
Journal of Biomedical Science (2020)

Expedient assembly of Oligo-LacNAcs by a sugar nucleotide regeneration system: Finding the role of tandem LacNAc and sialic acid position towards siglec binding. 
Wu HR, Anwar MT, Fan CY, Low PY, Angata T, Lin CC 
European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry (2019)

Soluble Siglec-14 glycan-recognition protein is generated by alternative splicing and suppresses myeloid inflammatory responses. 
Huang PJ, Low PY, Wang I, Hsu SD, Angata T 
The Journal of Biological Chemistry (2018)

Identification of Siglec ligands using a proximity labeling method. 
Chang L, Chen YJ, Fan CY, Tang CJ, Chen YH, Low PY, Ventura A, Lin CC, Chen YJ, Angata T 
Journal of Proteome Research (2017)

Associations of genetic polymorphisms of Siglecs with human diseases. 
Angata T 
Glycobiology (2014)

Publication List