Lance Wells, PhD

Dr. Lance Wells received his Ph.D. from Emory University School of Medicine and did his postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Dr. Gerald Hart, who discovered the O-GlcNAc modification, at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. During his NIH-supported fellowship in Dr. Hart’s laboratory, he participated in cloning and characterization of O-GlcNAcase (OGA) that is a potential therapeutic target for PD.  He moved to the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center at the University of Georgia to set up his own lab and is now Associate Director, a Distinguished Research Professor, and an endowed Georgia Research Alliance Distinguished Investigator. His laboratory uses analytical biochemistry and chemical/molecular biology tools to evaluate the role of protein glycosylation in diseases including O-GlcNAc transferase X-linked intellectual disability that his laboratory first biochemically described. His laboratory has also established and/or utilized a variety of mass spectrometry-based approaches for the enrichment, identification and characterization of glycoproteins, including O-GlcNAc-modified proteins.