Ten Feizi facts for kids

Ten Feizi (born in 1937) is a famous Turkish Cypriot/British scientist. She is a molecular biologist and a Professor at Imperial College London. She leads the Glycosciences Laboratory there. Her work focuses on understanding glycans, which are special sugar chains. In 2014, she won the Rosalind Kornfeld award from the Society for Glycobiology. She also became a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2021.

Early Life and Learning

Ten Feizi was born in Nicosia, Cyprus, in 1937. She grew up in a Turkish Cypriot family. After finishing school in Cyprus, she moved to London to study medicine. She went to the Royal Free Medical School and graduated with top honors in 1961.

After becoming a doctor, Feizi worked at the Hammersmith Hospital. She was interested in a type of lung infection called atypical pneumonia. She noticed that many patients with this infection developed something called cold agglutinins. These are like confused antibodies that stick to red blood cells. She showed that a type of bacteria, mycoplasma, could cause these antibodies to form.

She earned her MD degree at University College London. Her research there was about mycoplasma pneumoniae, the bacteria that causes the lung infection. Early in her career, she also worked at Columbia University and Rockefeller University. There, she studied glycans and extracted carbohydrates, which are types of sugars.

Discoveries and Career

In 1973, Professor Feizi joined the Medical Research Council in the UK. She became the head of a section that studied Glycoconjugates. Later, she started the Glycosciences Laboratory at Imperial College London. She became a full Professor at Imperial College in 1994.

Her early work looked at cold agglutinins, which are antibodies that react to cold temperatures. She studied how these antibodies connect to a specific part on red blood cells called the I antigen. She worked with another scientist, Sen-itiroh Hakomori, to understand this antigen better. They found it was part of a sugar chain.

Professor Feizi also discovered how the I antigen relates to mycoplasma bacteria. She showed that a specific sugar chain acts like a landing spot for mycoplasma. Her team was also the first to figure out the structure of a protein called envelope glycoprotein GP120. They also learned how it interacts with other cells.

She found that changes in sugar chains (called glycosylation) can be tracked using special antibodies. This helps understand how normal cells change into tumor cells. She also studied how animal lectins, which are proteins, bind to oligosaccharides (small sugar chains).

Her interest in sugar chains led her to create a new way to study them. She developed a system called the neoglycolipid (NGL)-based oligosaccharide microarray. This system allowed her to look at many different sugar chains at once. In 2002, her system was the first to study entire glycomes, which are all the sugar chains in a living thing.

Her glycoarray system is very important for understanding how germs interact with our bodies. It also helps explain how sugar chains and proteins work together in diseases. This system was used to find out how viruses like SV40 and Influenza A virus subtype H1N1 attach to human cells.

Awards and Honors

Professor Feizi has received many awards for her important work:

• 1994 American Society for Clinical Pathology Outstanding Research Award
• 2014 Society for Glycobiology Rosalind Kornfeld Lifetime Achievement Award
• 2020 Royal Society of Chemistry Carbohydrate Group Haworth Memorial Lectureship

She is also a Fellow of several important groups, including the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal College of Physicians, and the Royal College of Pathologists. In May 2021, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, which is a very high honor for scientists.

Selected Publications