David R. Bundle
RU Lemieux Professor of Carbohydrate Chemistry
Associate Chair of Research - Department of Chemistry
BSc University of Nottingham
PhD University of Newcastle
Phone: 780 - 492 - 8808
Fax: 780-492-7705
E-mail: dave.bundle@ualberta.ca
Professor Bundle is the former scientific director of the Alberta Glycomics Centre (formerly, the Alberta Innovates Centre for Carbohydrate Science). He currently serves on the editorial
boards of Advances in Carbohydrate Chemistry and Biochemistry, and
Glycobiology Journal and is a member of the advisory board of the
Complex Carbohydrate Research Centre. In Canada he is a member of
two Network Centres of Excellence, in Protein Engineering and Bacterial
Diseases and is the author of some 200 scientific papers, book chapters
and reviews, and patents.
David Bundle obtained his BSc in Chemistry from Nottingham University
(UK) and studied for his PhD in Microbiological Chemistry with Professor
Sir James Baddiley at the University of Newcastle (UK). He came to
Canada as a National Research Council of Canada (NRC) postdoctoral
fellow in 1971 at the Division of Biological Science, NRC, Ottawa.
Subsequently he held a postdoctoral fellowship and then a research
associateship with Professor R. U. Lemieux at the Department of Chemistry,
the University of Alberta. In 1975 he returned to the Division of
Biological Science, NRC. During the next 18 years, Dr. Bundle rose
to become a Principal Research Officer. He was successively Group
Leader and Section Head of the Division’s Immunochemistry Section.
In 1993, Dr. Bundle moved to the Department of Chemistry, University
of Alberta to accept a faculty position.
During his career Dr. Bundle helped pioneer the application of 13C
NMR to the structural elucidation of the capsular antigens of Neisseria
meningitidis. Later in the laboratory of Professor Lemieux, he was
a member of the team that developed methods for the first rational
synthesis of blood group antigens and their covalent attachment to
proteins for use as artificial antigens. The patents arising from
this work were the founding intellectual property of ChemBiomed,
Canada’s first biotechnology company and the first biotechnology
venture in Glycobiology. When he returned to NRC, Dr. Bundle made
several early contributions to methods for the conformational analysis
of oligosaccharides by high resolution NMR and molecular modeling
for estimating the three dimensional structure of oligosaccharide
antigens in solution. He pioneered the combination of hybridoma cell
culture techniques with the use of artificial antigens and developed
monoclonal blood typing reagents. He lead a team that solved the
first crystal structure of a carbohydrate-antibody complex and then
went on to solve a further 3 antibody crystal structures. His team
developed novel aspects of antibody engineering for carbohydrate
specific antibodies and produced a landmark study in the first crystal
structure of a single chain antibody in complex with its antigen.
Recently Professor Bundle has used the well-defined structural
details of carbohydrate-binding sites to investigate protein-sugar
interactions and the potential for rationale design of high affinity
ligands. A recent success involved tailored multivalency in the design
of a high avidity ligand for the Shiga like toxin responsible for
the diseases that result from pathogenic E. coli O157:H7.
In 1988, Dr. Bundle was the recipient of the Whistler Award in Carbohydrate
Chemistry, awarded by the International Carbohydrate Organization
for research by a young Carbohydrate Chemist. In 1995 he was elected
a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2000 he received the
Canadian Society of Chemistry's R.U. Lemieux prize for contributions
to Organic Chemistry.
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