• Title William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor
    Director, Center for Biomedical Mass Spectrometry
  • Education MS, PhD: Georgetown University, Washington, DC
  • Office 670 Albany, Room 511
  • Web Address http://www.bumc.bu.edu/msr/
  • Phone 617-638-6490
  • Area of Interest Biopolymer structural studies based on development and application of mass spectral methods

The objective of our research is to establish the detailed structures of biopolymers in order to understand their structure-activity relationships as they influence or reflect biological processes related to health, growth and development, and disease. Our particular focus for new method development is on the needs of glycobiology, since carbohydrates and their conjugates (glycoproteins, glycolipids, etc.) are involved in targeting and immune system recognition, nervous system growth and development, infection, parasite response, carcinogenesis, and other critical processes. The techniques for full structural characterization of these complex molecules are much less developed than are methods for linear biopolymers (proteins and oligonucleotides). Recent introduction of new mass spectral ionization methods and rapid progress in means for mass separation and detection now make it possible to perform structural studies on low picomole amounts of samples even when they are complex mixtures. In our research program we are refining and extending the tools of mass spectrometry and are applying them to studies of biopolymers undertaken with collaborators at BUSM and other institutions around and outside the US. Our laboratory is a Resource Center sponsored by the NIH National Institute of General Medical Sciences.


Cheng Lin – Research Associate Professor
Mark McComb – Research Associate Professor
Nivedita Bhattacharya- Postdoctoral Associate
Kevin Chandler – Postdoctoral Associate
Deborah Francoleon – Postdoctoral Associate
Christian Heckendorf – Research Fellow 
Juan Wei – Postdoctoral Associate
John Haserick – Graduate Student

  1. Khatri K, Klein JA, Haserick JR, Leon DR, Costello CE, McComb ME, Zaia J. Microfluidic Capillary Electrophoresis-Mass Spectrometry for Analysis of Monosaccharides, Oligosaccharides, and Glycopeptides. Anal Chem. 2017 Jun 06.PMID: 28530388.
  2. Pianta A, Arvikar S, Strle K, Drouin EE, Wang Q, Costello CE, Steere AC. Evidence of the Immune Relevance of Prevotella copri, a Gut Microbe, in Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2017 May; 69(5):964-975. PMID: 27863183;
  3. Glaskin RS, Khatri K, Wang Q, Zaia J, Costello CE. Construction of a Database of Collision Cross Section Values for Glycopeptides, Glycans, and Peptides Determined by IM-MS. Anal Chem. 2017 Apr 18; 89(8):4452-4460.28323417
  4. Haserick JR, Leon DR, Samuelson J, Costello CE. Asparagine-Linked Glycans of Cryptosporidium parvum Contain a Single Long Arm, Are Barely Processed in the Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) or Golgi, and Show a Strong Bias for Sites with Threonine. Mol Cell Proteomics. 2017 Apr; 16(4 suppl 1):S42-S53.28179475; 
  5. Chandler KB, Leon DR, Meyer RD, Rahimi N, Costello CE. Site-Specific N-Glycosylation of Endothelial Cell Receptor Tyrosine Kinase VEGFR-2. J Proteome Res. 2017 Feb 03; 16(2):677-688. 27966990
  6. Ma J, Banerjee P, Whelan SA, Liu T, Wei AC, Ramirez-Correa G, McComb ME, Costello CE, O’Rourke B, Murphy A, Hart GW. Comparative Proteomics Reveals Dysregulated Mitochondrial O-GlcNAcylation in Diabetic Hearts. J Proteome Res. 2016 Jul 1; 15(7):2254-64. PMID: 27213235. PubMed
  7. Premasiri WR, Lee JC, Sauer-Budge A, Théberge R, Costello CE, Ziegler LD. The biochemical origins of the surface-enhanced Raman spectra of bacteria: a metabolomics profiling by SERS. Anal Bioanal Chem. 2016 Jul; 408(17):4631-47. PMID: 27100230.
    View in: PubMed
  8. Lucena MC, Carvalho-Cruz P, Donadio JL, Oliveira IA, de Queiroz RM, Marinho-Carvalho MM, Sola-Penna M, de Paula IF, Gondim KC, McComb ME, Costello CE, Whelan SA, Todeschini AR, Dias WB. Epithelial Mesenchymal Transition Induces Aberrant Glycosylation through Hexosamine Biosynthetic Pathway Activation. J Biol Chem. 2016 Jun 17; 291(25):12917-29. PMID: 27129262.
    View in: PubMed
  9. Chandler KB, Costello CE. Glycomics and glycoproteomics of membrane proteins and cell-surface receptors: Present trends and future opportunities. Electrophoresis. 2016 Jun; 37(11):1407-19. PMID: 26872045.
    View in: PubMed
  10. Pu Y, Ridgeway ME, Glaskin RS, Park MA, Costello CE, Lin C. Separation and Identification of Isomeric Glycans by Selected Accumulation-Trapped Ion Mobility Spectrometry-Electron Activated Dissociation Tandem Mass Spectrometry. Anal Chem. 2016 Apr 5; 88(7):3440-3. PMID: 26959868.
    View in: PubMed

Complete list can be found at BU Profiles

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