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Letter to the Editor: Pennsylvania burdened by influx of students and unskilled workers from bordering states

Letter to the Editor: Democrats make grave error by not supporting ‘the sanctity of all life’

<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; You probably hear &#8220;carbohydrate&#8221; and think of food, not medicine. But the truth is, even if you don&#8217;t &#8220;carbo load,&#8221; you&#8217;re already carbo-loaded. The part of you that&#8217;s not water is overwhelmingly carbohydrates. And that&#8217;s why the chemical you think of as supper or snack can actually be vaccine or cure.</p><p>Trust Zbigniew Witczak on this, and not just because he&#8217;s the chair of Wilkes University pharmaceutical sciences, nor just because of his avuncular gray beard and disarming Polish accent. (&#8220;My two grown sons say, &#8216;Forget it, you&#8217;ll never ever be talking the way we talk,&#8217;&#8221; he said, chuckling. &#8220;I&#8217;ll die with my accent.&#8221;)</p><p>No, when it comes to carbohydrates as potential pharmaceuticals, you can trust Witczak because he wrote (well, edited) the book on it, titled &#8220;Carbohydrates in drug design&#8221; &#8212; and he just became president of the International Carbohydrate Organization.</p><p>Yes, that&#8217;s not only a thing, it&#8217;s a pretty venerable group, having been around since 1980 &#8212; and having sprung from biennial international meetings of carbohydrate chemists that began in 1960.</p><p>Born and raised in Communist Poland, Witczak earned his doctorate in organic chemistry of natural products from the Medical University of Lodz &#8212; some 330 miles south of the port of Gdansk, birthplace of the nation&#8217;s Solidarity movement that made global headlines in the early 1980s</p><p>That was just about the time Roy Whistler &#8212; the American who essentially formed the International Carbohydrate Organization &#8212; came to Poland to present on a project.</p><p>&#8220;I was invited to his lab,&#8221; Witczak said with a smile. &#8220;He was an unusual man of wisdom, of &#8212; &#8221; he paused, grasping for the right English word. &#8220;Well, how to accurately describe him? He was a man of great vision.&#8221;</p><p>Whistler became the first president of the the International Carbohydrate Organization, and seeing promise in the work of the young Polish Ph.D., he invited Witczak to come and help with research at Purdue University.</p><p>&#8220;I never intended to stay in the United States the rest of my life,&#8221; Witczak conceded. &#8220;And I never, ever dreamt I&#8217;d become the president of the organization, like my former boss.&#8221;</p><p>Yet here he is, a proud U.S. citizen who peppers his chat with praise for his adopted country.</p><p>Admit it, the nerd in you wants to know how carbohydrates become medicine, and, no, a lollipop a day won&#8217;t keep the doctor away.</p><p>&#8220;Carbohydrates play a very specific function in being responsible for viral infections,&#8221; Witczak said. Human tissue and cells are laced with the chemical, and often a virus gets into a cell via a specific sugar that lets the virus &#8220;latch on.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;Take away the sugar, and you have no infection,&#8221; Witczak said with another smile.</p><p>So people like Witczak are working on ways to disrupt the link between carbohydrate in cells and infectious organisms. The potential is huge. It could work on viruses, bacteria and even cancer.</p><p>Witczak remains president until the 2018 International Carbohydrate Symposium in Lisbon. In fact, his primary responsibility is to make sure that symposium happens &#8212; while still fulfilling responsibilities as teacher, researcher and department chair.</p><p>&#8220;I have to do it in my spare time,&#8221; he quipped.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Zbigniew Witczak, Wilkes University pharmaceutical sciences chair, recently became president of the International Carbohydrate Organization. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/web1_TTL080316carbohydrate1-1.jpg</photo0><caption0>Zbigniew Witczak, Wilkes University pharmaceutical sciences chair, recently became president of the International Carbohydrate Organization. </caption0><photoCredit0>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/web1_TTL080316carbohydrate2-1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Witczak speaks with student Rachael Hohol, a senior chemistry major, in one of the Wilkes University labs. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/web1_TTL080316carbohydrate2-1.jpg</photo1><caption1>Witczak speaks with student Rachael Hohol, a senior chemistry major, in one of the Wilkes University labs. </caption1><photoCredit1>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/web1_TTL080316carbohydrate1-cmyk-1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Zbigniew Witczak, Wilkes University pharmaceutical sciences chair, recently became president of the International Carbohydrate Organization. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/web1_TTL080316carbohydrate1-cmyk-1.jpg</photo2><caption2>Zbigniew Witczak, Wilkes University pharmaceutical sciences chair, recently became president of the International Carbohydrate Organization. </caption2><photoCredit2>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit2></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/web1_TTL080316carbohydrate2-cmyk-1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Witczak speaks with student Rachael Hohol, a senior chemistry major, in one of the Wilkes University labs. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo3>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/web1_TTL080316carbohydrate2-cmyk-1.jpg</photo3><caption3>Witczak speaks with student Rachael Hohol, a senior chemistry major, in one of the Wilkes University labs. </caption3><photoCredit3>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit3></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><subheadMeta>Wilkes prof is chair of internationalorganization with surprising focus</subheadMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Mark Guydish</p><p>mguydish@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Carbs-as-medicine work earns Wilkes department chair international position