The promise of glycomics, glycan arrays and carbohydrate-based vaccines

Abstract

Carbohydrates and glycoconjugates are involved in a number of biological processes including host-pathogen interactions, cell communication, proliferation and differentiation as well as the initiation of immune responses. However, access to synthetic oligosaccharide structures has been limited for long time since no standardized protocols for the synthesis of complex oligosaccharides from monomeric building block existed. Recent advances in glycochemistry and glycobiology have helped elucidate biological functions of carbohydrates. Novel methods such as automated synthesis of vaccine candidates and immunologically relevant carbohydrates have contributed to this success as well as high-throughput methods such as glycan arrays. This review illustrates the impact of carbohydrate synthesis on the design of efficient carbohydrate-based antimicrobial and anticancer vaccines. Furthermore, this review focuses on how immunological research can benefit from these novel tools provided by glycochemistry.

Keywords::

• Glycan arrays
• carbohydrate-based vaccines
• glycomics
• glycoproteins
• immunology

Acknowledgments

We thank the Max Planck Society for very generous support of this program.

Declaration of interest: Previously, funding from ETH Zurich and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) was crucial to our research program. Funding of the research group Glycoimmunology of B.L. by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is also gratefully acknowledged. The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.