Sharma Shreya, Shekhar Shashank, Sharma Bhasha, Jain Purnima
Department of Chemistry, Netaji Subhas University of Technology Dwarka Sec-2 Delhi India
RSC Adv. 2020 Sep 15;10(56):34099-34113. doi: 10.1039/d0ra04471g. eCollection 2020 Sep 10.
Neoteric techniques, skills, and methodological advances in glycobiology and glycochemistry have been instrumental in pertinent discoveries to pave way for a new era in biomedical sciences. Glycans are sugar-based polymers that coat cells and decorate majority of proteins, forming glycoproteins. They are also found deposited in extracellular spaces between cells, attached to soluble signaling molecules, and are key players in several biological processes including regulation of immune responses and cell-cell interactions. Laboratory manipulations of protein, DNA and other macromolecules celebrate the accelerated research in respective fields, but the same seems unlikely for the complex sugar polymers. The structural complex polymers are neither synthesized using a known template nor are dynamically stable with respect to a cell's metabolic rate. What is more, sugar isomers-structurally distinct molecules with the same chemical formula-can be employed to construct varied glycans, but are almost impossible to tell apart based on molecular weight alone. The apparent lack of a glycan alphabet further reflects on an enduring question: how little do we know about the sugars? Evidently, glycan-based therapeutic potentials and glycomimetics are propitious advances for the future that have not been well exploited, and with a few conspicuous anomalies. Here, we contour the most notable contributions to enhance our ability to utilize the complex glycans as therapeutics. Diagnostic strategies concerning recurrent diseases and headways to address the challenges are also discussed.
糖生物学和糖化学领域的现代技术、技能和方法学进展对相关发现起到了推动作用，为生物医学科学的新时代铺平了道路。聚糖是基于糖的聚合物，覆盖细胞并修饰大多数蛋白质，形成糖蛋白。它们也存在于细胞间的细胞外空间中，附着于可溶性信号分子上，并且是包括免疫反应调节和细胞间相互作用在内的多种生物过程中的关键参与者。对蛋白质、DNA和其他大分子的实验室操作推动了各自领域的加速研究，但对于复杂的糖聚合物而言似乎并非如此。这些结构复杂的聚合物既不是使用已知模板合成的，也相对于细胞的代谢速率而言不是动态稳定的。此外，糖异构体——具有相同化学式但结构不同的分子——可用于构建各种聚糖，但仅基于分子量几乎无法区分它们。明显缺乏聚糖字母表进一步反映了一个长期存在的问题：我们对糖类了解多少？显然，基于聚糖的治疗潜力和糖模拟物是未来尚未得到充分利用的有利进展，并且存在一些明显的异常情况。在此，我们概述了最显著的贡献，以提高我们将复杂聚糖用作治疗剂的能力。还讨论了关于复发性疾病的诊断策略以及应对挑战的进展。
