Grafting Pathways of Glycoprotein Structures. The Research Team of Dr. Shang-Te Danny Hsu, Academia Sinica, Won the Fifth NSRRC Outstanding Paper Award.
2025/09/02
The National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center (NSRRC) has presented its fifth Outstanding Paper Award to Dr. Shang-Te Danny Hsu of the Institute of Biological Chemistry, Academia Sinica, and his international research team, in recognition of their development of GlycoSHIELD, a powerful computational platform for simulating glycoprotein structures. Published in Cell in 2024 and recognized as one of Academia Sinica’s major research achievements of the year, the work earned unanimous praise from the award committee and stood out from a highly competitive field. Dr Hsu and his team were honored at an award ceremony on September 2, receiving a trophy and NT$300,000 in prize money.
Viewed under an electron microscope, viruses and cells are cloaked not only in proteins but frequently in a fuzzy layer of sugars—complex carbohydrates known as glycans. This “sugar shield” helps viruses slip past the immune system and invade host cells. Because glycan patterns are highly variable and lack a fixed template, they have long been uncharted territory in protein structure research.
To address such challenge, Dr. Hsu’s research team spent four years developing GlycoSHIELD, integrating cryo-electron microscopy, mass spectrometry, and molecular modeling to enable rapid simulations of 3D structural models of glycoproteins on personal computers. The fast and realistic simulations illustrate how glycans mask viral surfaces and allow predictions of how viruses recognize host receptor molecules while being targeted by antibodies. GlycoSHIELD can help reveal exposed hotspots for drug designs, potentially enhancing the accuracy and effectiveness of antibodies and vaccines. Such a breakthrough offers an alternative to the time-consuming methods conventionally used in glycoprotein structural research, paving the way for accelerated vaccine and drug development with significant commercial potential.
The major breakthrough of GlycoSHIELD is the result of superb international and interdisciplinary collaboration among scientists from Taiwan, Poland, and France, including Dr. Hsu’s research team, Dr. Mateusz Sikora of Jagiellonian University of Poland, and Dr. Cyril Hanus of the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) in France.
The small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) endstation at the Taiwan Light Source of NSRRC played a pivotal role in revealing glycoprotein structures and dynamics that cryo-electron microscopy alone cannot capture. Incorporating SAXS data not only strengthened confidence in the structural models, but also demonstrated the method’s broad applicability for studying glycoprotein architectures and their interactions with drug molecules. GlycoSHIELD has since been applied to multiple viral systems, including SARS-CoV-2 and HCoV-229E.
Dr. Hsu is a recipient of the 2021 Outstanding Research Award from the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC, formerly the Ministry of Science and Technology) and the 2024 Franco-Taiwanese Scientific Grand Prize, jointly awarded by the French Academy of Sciences and NSTC. He is now promoting GlycoSHIELD as an open-access platform, aiming to connect AI-driven protein structure predictions with precision medicine, and to open a new chapter in glycobiology research.
[ Origins of the NSRRC Outstanding Paper Award ]
The “NSRRC Outstanding Paper Award” was established in 2017 thanks to the generosity of Academician Chien-Te Chen, who was honored with Taiwan’s Presidential Science Prize that same year. Academician Chen donated both the trophy and the entire monetary prize to encourage more technological developments and scientific research using Taiwan’s synchrotron facilities. To uphold this initiative, the donated funds were invested in a solar panel system installed at NSRRC, with the proceeds from solar electricity sales now supporting the Outstanding Paper Award, promoting knowledge through sustainability.
The purpose of the Outstanding Paper Award is to advance scientific research and recognize high-impact publications resulting from using NSRRC experimental facilities. The award is divided into three categories: Applied Sciences, Life Sciences, and Natural Sciences, rotating its focus annually. In 2025, the focus is on life science.
