Ram Sasisekharan, chief technology adviser, MVM Life Science, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Not many people would sink their teeth into sequencing sugar structures when the human genome held such mouth-watering promise. But Ram Sasisekharan sought and accepted a challenge from his thesis adviser, Robert Langer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). (see CV).

Sasisekharan found the long-ignored sugars field — severely hampered by a lack of tools and technology — an opportunity in disguise. Unlike DNA, sugars can't be amplified through tools such as the polymerase chain reaction. They are also made up of complex structures in varied abundance. He used a number-based approach to identify the different pieces, allowing mathematical manipulations to solve the structure. “Sequencing DNA is like walking through a ladder, but sequencing sugars is more like putting a puzzle together,” he says.

The puzzle complete, he and Langer set up Momenta Pharmaceuticals. With a detailed structural knowledge of polysaccharides, it is possible to improve existing drugs, create generics and discover novel drugs by better understanding their role in cell function.

With $83 million raised, Momenta is launching a heparin drug and delving into cancer. By discovering how cancer cells gain a growth advantage by altering their sugar coat, Sasisekharan hopes to develop insights for a potential new avenue of therapeutics.

Stressing the importance of mentors, Sasisekharan notes that meeting Langer was a career-changing event. Although a graduate student at Harvard University, he heard Langer give a talk during a chance visit to MIT. Langer's ‘can-do’ approach to science inspired him to be passionate about big-picture problems.

“The most exciting thing is to be able to bring a team effort to a complex problem,” he says. His latest team is MVM Life Science Partners, the US subsidiary of the UK-based life-sciences investment firm.

The move towards an integrated, systems-biology approach to science is a welcome change for Sasisekharan. He encourages young scientists to gain exposure to challenging problems that are also practical in nature.

In doing so, he's turned seemingly useless molecules into potential therapeutic drugs. It can't get much sweeter than that.