Dr. John L Magnani Ph.D.

Dr. Magnani is co-founder and CSO of GlycoMimetics, Inc (GMI). Prior to co-founding GMI, Dr. Magnani founded and led a predecessor company, GlycoTech Corporation, as its President and CEO. Previously, he helped co-found the U.S. subsidiary of BioCarb and became its international Vice President of Research. Dr. 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 (NIH). He remained at the NIH for 10 years, finally serving as a tenured research chemist. Dr. Magnani is an expert in glycobiology, having discovered and characterized many carbohydrate tumor antigens, such as the FDA-approved cancer diagnostic, CA19-9. He also developed fundamental technology for the identification of functional carbohydrate epitopes. Dr. Magnani is the discoverer of Sialyl Lea and its functions. He was the first to identify the binding domain to the selectins common to both Sialyl Lea and Sialyl Lex and used this information to develop potent selectin antagonists as drug candidates now in clinical trials. He is the recipient of the 2020 Horton Award from the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the 2015 President's Innovation Award from the Society of Glycobiology. Dr. Magnani has authored over 100 scientific publications and is an inventor on more than 90 issued patents.