Nicholas M. Riley

About

Systems glycobiology enabled by innovations in mass spectrometry and chemical biology. Glycosylation is a dominant feature of extracellular phenotypes. Glycoproteins present distinct combinations of glycans and amino acids that create unique molecular surfaces to relay biological information in a variety of biological processes.

Research topics

• Biology
• Biochemistry
• Chemistry
• Cell biology
• Computational biology
• Immunology
• Organic chemistry
• Genetics
• Chromatography

Selected publications

• Comparative analysis of glycoproteomic software using a tailored glycan database

  Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry · 2025-03-17 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Improvements in Glycoproteomics through Architecture Changes to the Orbitrap Tribrid MS Platform

  Analytical Chemistry · 2025-05-29 · 6 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Hardware changes introduced on the Orbitrap Ascend Tribrid MS include dual ion routing multipoles (IRMs) that enable parallelized accumulation, dissociation, and Orbitrap mass analysis of three separate ion populations. The balance between these instrument functions is especially important in glycoproteomics, where complexities of glycopeptide fragmentation necessitate large precursor ion populations and long ion accumulation times for quality MS/MS spectra. To compound matters further, dissocia…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Antibody-lectin chimeras for glyco-immune checkpoint blockade

  Nature Biotechnology · 2025-12-16 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  Despite the curative potential of checkpoint blockade immunotherapy, many patients remain unresponsive to existing treatments. Glyco-immune checkpoints, which involve interactions of cell-surface glycans with lectin, or glycan-binding, immunoreceptors, have emerged as prominent mechanisms of immune evasion and therapeutic resistance in cancer. Here, we describe antibody-lectin chimeras (AbLecs), a modular system for glyco-immune checkpoint blockade. AbLecs are bispecific antibody-like molecules…

  PublisherDOI

• Extracting informative glycan-specific ions from glycopeptide MS/MS spectra with GlyCounter

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-03-25 · 3 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Glycopeptide tandem mass spectra typically contain numerous glycan-specific fragments that can inform several features of glycan modifications, including glycan class, composition, and structure. While these fragment ions are often straightforward to observe by eye, few tools exist to systemically explore these common glycopeptide spectral features or explore their relationships to each other. Instead, most studies rely on manual inspection to understand glycan-informative ion content in their d…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Foundation model for mass spectrometry proteomics

  ArXiv.org · 2025-05-16 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Mass spectrometry is the dominant technology in the field of proteomics, enabling high-throughput analysis of the protein content of complex biological samples. Due to the complexity of the instrumentation and resulting data, sophisticated computational methods are required for the processing and interpretation of acquired mass spectra. Machine learning has shown great promise to improve the analysis of mass spectrometry data, with numerous purpose-built methods for improving specific steps in t…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Uniting Mass Spectrometry and Glycoscience to Investigate Cancer Biology

  NIH · $88k · 2018–2023

• Capturing the Holistic Glycocode through Systems Glycobiology

  NIH · $498k · 2022–2027

• Uniting Mass Spectrometry and Glycoscience to Investigate Cancer Biology

  NIH · $65k · 2016–2018

Frequent coauthors

• Carolyn R. Bertozzi

  Stanford University

  147 shared

• Joshua J. Coon

  Morgridge Institute for Research

  106 shared

• Michael S. Westphall

  Quantitative BioSciences

  43 shared

• Kayvon Pedram

  Janelia Research Campus

  30 shared

• Sharon J. Pitteri

  Stanford University

  24 shared

• D. Judy Shon

  California Institute of Technology

  24 shared

• Amato J. Giaccia

  CRUK/MRC Oxford Institute for Radiation Oncology

  23 shared

• Stacy A. Malaker

  Yale University

  22 shared

Labs

• Riley Research Group at UWPI

Education

• Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, Joshua J. Coon Group

  University of Wisconsin Madison

  2018

• B.S. in Chemistry and Psychology, with Honors from the South Carolina Honors College, College of Arts and Sciences

  University of South Carolina

  2012

Awards & honors

• American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) Research Award…
• Scialog Fellow, Automating Chemical Laboratories, 2024
• Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) Rising Star Award, 2023
• Rising Star in Glycoscience, Translational Glycomics Center,…
• Distinguished Young Honors Alumni Award, South Carolina Hono…

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