Rebekah L. Gundry

Cell surface glycoproteins and glycans play critical roles in a range of physiological functions and disease processes, are valuable drug targets, and may be exploited as biomarkers for precision medicine. Despite their biological relevance and utility, glycoproteins and glycans are often understudied largely due to technical challenges. Consequently, we have an incomplete understanding of proteins and signaling pathways differentially present in normal or diseased hearts, a limited number of accessible targets for organ- and cell type-directed drug delivery, and few validated cell type-specific reagents for cell sorting and imaging of cardiac cells. This presentation will describe the development and application of new analytical platforms that enable rapid identification and quantification of cell surface glycoproteins and glycans, respectively, from small sample sizes to yield new molecular level insight inaccessible to transcriptomics and generic proteomic approaches. The application of these new methodologies to address outstanding questions in cardiac physiology and disease, with an emphasis on precision medicine, will be described. New developments in software, robotics, and mass spectrometry hardware that are especially critical for these workflows will be highlighted.

Rebekah L. Gundry brings extensive expertise in mass spectrometry, proteomics, metabolomics, and bioinformatics to ensure the Multiomics Mass Spectrometry core facility can meet the mass spectrometry-related goals proposed in the application. She received her PhD under the supervision of Dr. Robert J. Cotter at the NSF Mid-Atlantic Mass Spectrometry Laboratory at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine then completed postdoctoral training in the Bayview Proteomics Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine under the guidance of Dr. Jennifer Van Eyk. Since then, she has established a robust independent research program, first at the Medical College of Wisconsin (2010-2019) and now at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (2019-present) and has >20 years’ experience developing and applying mass spectrometry technologies to study proteins, metabolites, glycoproteins and glycans within the context of cardiovascular disease and stem cell biology. Dr. Gundry is a leading expert on cell surface glycoprotein analysis techniques, bioinformatics, glycobiology, and the cellular and molecular events that occur during the development of heart failure and during stem cell differentiation. In 2017, she was asked to take over management of the Medical College of Wisconsin mass spectrometry core and within just two years, this core grew to support grant applications that led to $30.2M total costs in new funding to 15 investigators across six departments. She moved to UNMC in August 2019 and was asked to take over leadership of the University of Nebraska Medical Center mass spectrometry core in March 2024. 

• Time: 11:00 AM
• Location: 206 Furnas Hall