Special Issue "Synthesis and Biological Applications of Glycoconjugates"
Glycans are parts of glycoconjugates (glycoproteins, glycolipids, proteoglycans) and are involved in numerous biological recognition events. Glycans are considered as encoding molecules. Maintaining, for example, cellular crosstalk on a molecular level is directly related to the vast chemical diversity of glycan structures. Glycan assembly by chemical and/or enzymatic synthesis is therefore challenging. Novel and efficient synthetic procedures for glycan-based products need to be developed and optimized. Especially, multi-enzyme cascade reactions are of great interest for the production of glycans in larger scale. Protein engineering of enzymes leads to tailored biocatalysts with favorable and novel properties. Most importantly, the combination of chemo- and biocatalysis will expand the scope of novel routes for the synthesis of glycoconjugates. In this way, complex glycans and neo-glycoconjugates will be accessible for their application.
Decoding of glycan information by carbohydrate recognizing molecules (lectins, antibodies, aptamers) is closely related to their multivalent glycan presentation on surface scaffolds, the glyco-biointerface. Monitoring the read-out of binding events can then efficiently be translated in diagnostic and therapeutic biomedical applications.
With this little overview, I cordially invite you to contribute and share your recent research results in this Special Issue on the synthesis and biological applications of glycoconjugates.
5-fluorouracil (5-FU) is a specific anti-cancer agent that is generally used to treat gastrointestinal, colorectal, and breast cancer. In this work, chitosan (CS) was extracted from local fish scales using an established method. 5-FU was then converted to 1-acetic acid-5-fluorouracil (FUAC) and reacted [...] Read more.
Repeats of the disaccharide unit N-acetyllactosamine (LacNAc) occur as type 1 (Galβ1, 3GlcNAc) and type 2 (Galβ1, 4GlcNAc) glycosylation motifs on glycoproteins and glycolipids. The LacNAc motif acts as binding ligand for lectins and is involved in many biological recognition events. To [...] Read more.
The synthesis of different classes of prenylated aglycones (α,β-dihydroxanthohumol (2) and (Z)-6,4’-dihydroxy-4-methoxy-7-prenylaurone (3)) was performed in one step reactions from xanthohumol (1)—major prenylated chalcone naturally occurring in hops. Obtained flavonoids (2–3) [...] Read more.
Tuberculosis is still one of the most deadly infectious diseases worldwide, and the use of conjugated antigens, obtained by combining antigenic oligosaccharides, such as the lipoarabinomannane (LAM), with antigenic proteins from Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), has been proposed as a new strategy for developing [...] Read more.
We aimed to explore the roles of glycoproteins in the pathogenesis of chronic and latent Keshan disease (CKD and LKD), and screen the lectins as indicators of significant differences in glycoproteins of KD saliva and serum. Blood and saliva were collected from 50 [...] Read more.
In this paper, three cationic glycolipids with different hydrophobic chains Malt-DiC12MA (IX a), Malt-DiC14MA (IX b) and Malt-DiC16MA (IX c) were constructed by using maltose as starting material via peracetylation, selective 1-O-deacetylation, trichloroacetimidation, glycosylation, azidation, [...] Read more.
The many advances in glycoscience have more and more brought to light the crucial role of glycosides and glycoconjugates in biological processes. Their major influence on the functionality and stability of peptides, cell recognition, health and immunity and many other processes throughout biology [...] Read more.