Immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibody molecule with glycan attached. Inset shows glycan structure. Credit: RCSB Protein Data Bank
by Michelle Taylor, Editor-in-Chief
Realizing the dream of truly personalized medicine is a huge goal in the biomedical research landscape. Biomarker discovery is a fundamental arm of progress in personalized medicine that has been revolutionized by advances in exploring genomic, proteomic and metabolomic markers of health and disease. But one promising sector remains largely unexplored: glycomic biomarkers, which encompass the glycans and patterns of glycosylation present in the body.
Glycans are complex, branched chains of polysaccharides and oligosaccharides that join to proteins and lipids in a process called glycosylation. Their presence throughout cells and tissues and their role in maintaining normal biological functions—from facilitating vital cell-to-cell interactions to guiding protein folding—make glycans an ideal potential class of biomarkers for numerous diseases. Research in detecting and characterizing dysregulated glycosylation and its impact on downstream processes will be a key contribution to the development of new diagnostics and therapeutics.
Pamela James, Vice President of Vector Laboratories, recently spoke to Labcompare about the importance of glycans, technologies to advance glycan research and how glycobiology is posed to impact future health and disease research.
Q: The glycosylation process has been notoriously difficult to study. What new technologies are helping to make screening more scalable and consistent to achieve reliable results?
Read the answers on Labcompare