Description

The hour long technical talk by Dr. Peter H. Seeberger will discuss his research on pure glycans, which are the key to enable biochemical, biophysical and immunological studies aimed at understanding the role of carbohydrates. Described is the development of a fully integrated platform for automated glycan assembly (AGA) based on solid-phase oligosaccharide synthesis and carbohydrate arrays to address biological problems. Particular emphasis in this lecture will be placed on the new automated synthesis platform that has been commercialized. Access to defined polysaccharides as long as 50-mers enables now biological as well as materials science investigations. These synthetic polysaccharides can be combined much like “molecular LEGO” to create even larger oligosaccharide assemblies. Quality control of synthetic glycans can now be guaranteed using ion mobility mass spectrometry to very low levels.

Carbohydrate arrays are used as diagnostics and in support of vaccine programs that are based on conjugates with synthetic oligosaccharides to screen blood sera. Case studies of specific vaccines will provide an appreciation for the approach that is now advancing candidates toward clinical testing. Fully synthetic vaccine candidates exploit iNKT cells for to induce a robust and protective immune response.