Dr. Carlito B. Lebrilla is a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Davis, in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine in the School of Medicine. He received his BS degree from the University of California, Irvine, and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He was an Alexander von Humboldt and a NSF-NATO Fellow at the Technical University in Berlin. He was also selected as a UC President’s Fellow before starting at UC Davis. He has served as Chair of the Chemistry Department. His research is in Analytical Chemistry focused on mass spectrometry with applications to clinical glycomics and biofunctional food. He has co-founded several start-ups in the areas of bioactive foods and disease biomarkers that has raised collectively over $500M in funding. He has published nearly 500 peer-reviewed papers and has been selected as a Fellow of the AAAS. He has been awarded the Field and Franklin Medal for outstanding contributions to mass spectrometry, MCP Lectureship in Glycobiology, UCD Outstanding Researcher Award and UCD Innovator Award. He is also Co-Chief Editor of Mass Spectrometry Reviews and has been on the editorial board of Molecular and Cellular Proteomics, Glycobiology, Mass Spectrometry Reviews, Journal of American Society for Mass Spectrometry, European Mass Spectrometry, and International Journal of Mass Spectrometry. He is currently the VP of Programs and the President-Elect for the American Society of Mass Spectrometry.
Dr. Lebrilla will speak on “Advancing Food Analysis with Multi-Omics Approaches for guiding product formulation, clinical trials, policy development, and improving AI” on Monday, August 25, 2025, at 8:00 AM.
Presenter: Carlito B. Lebrilla
University of California, Davis
Department of Chemistry and Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine
Title: Advancing Food Analysis with Multi-Omics Approaches for Guiding Product Formulation, Clinical Trials, Policy Development, and Improving AI
Quantitative analysis of food components is essential for optimizing food formulation, enhancing the effectiveness of clinical trials, informing nutrition policy, and improving AI applications in the food domain. To support these goals, a suite of advanced analytical tools has been developed for the two most abundant food components: carbohydrates and proteins. These tools significantly improve upon current methodologies by offering high sensitivity and quantitative precision across a broad range of molecular sizes—from monomers to large polymers.
For protein analysis, the platform encompasses metabolomic (amino acids and dipeptides), peptidomic (peptides), and proteomic (whole proteins) approaches. Similarly, carbohydrate analysis spans monosaccharides, oligosaccharides, and polysaccharides, corresponding to metabolomic and glycomic levels. Carbohydrates present unique challenges due to their structural complexity and diverse linkage patterns, which often lead to misclassification in nutritional databases and inaccuracies in clinical interpretations.
To address these issues, a comprehensive multi-glycomic platform has been developed. Carbohydrates are fractionated into alcohol-soluble and alcohol-insoluble components. The soluble fractions are analyzed using advanced liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-MS) to identify free mono-, di-, and oligosaccharides. The insoluble fractions undergo three specialized LC-MS workflows that enable detailed monosaccharide quantification, linkage analysis (covering over 100 types), and polysaccharide identification and quantification.
These multi-omics methods are rapid, automated, and highly quantitative, allowing for in-depth structural characterization of both whole and processed foods, as well as their interactions with the digestive tract and the gut microbiome. The resulting data not only inform clinical trials and nutrition policy but also enhance AI models by providing detailed structural-functional insights into key food components.
