Rate My Professor Jamey Marth

Jamey Marth is the Carbon Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Mellichamp Professor of Systems Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he also directs the Center for Nanomedicine in collaboration with the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, holding a professorship there as well. He earned his PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Washington in 1987, with a thesis on cloning and characterizing the proto-oncogene lck, encoding the T-cell specific tyrosine kinase p56lck. Early in his career, Marth served as a staff scientist at Oncogen Corporation in Seattle, then as a founding faculty member of the Biomedical Research Centre and professor in the Department of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia. In 1995, he joined the University of California, San Diego in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine as an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for over 14 years, and later directed the Immunity and Pathogenesis program at Sanford Burnham Prebys.

Marth's research specializes in nanomedicine and bioengineering to investigate fundamental biology and disease mechanisms, particularly the roles of protein glycosylation in physiological processes and pathologies including diabetes, sepsis, autoimmunity, colitis, and cancer. He pioneered glycoimmunology by showing how glycosylation alterations trigger immune dysregulation and chronic inflammation via cryptic immature glycan linkages. Key innovations include the first application of Cre-loxP recombination to mouse transgenesis for conditional gene targeting, now a cornerstone technology, and generation of mouse models with dysfunctional N-glycan genes (Mgat1, Mgat2, Mgat3, Mgat4a, Man2a1) and sialyltransferases, revealing essential functions in embryogenesis, hemostasis, and sepsis via the Ashwell-Morell receptor for desialylated protein clearance. His studies overturned prior views on Type 2 diabetes by demonstrating acquired beta cell dysfunction from obesity-induced glycosylation changes affecting GLUT2 stability. Marth deposited a large collection of glycan mouse strains at The Jackson Laboratory. He received the 2017 Karl Meyer Award from the Society for Glycobiology for linking glycans to diabetes, lupus, and sepsis, and major funding including a $13.5 million NIH grant in 2021 for sepsis pathogenesis and a $3.5 million grant in 2014. At UCSB, he developed curricula in cell biology and bioengineering introducing glycobiology to students.