Microarray Analysis of Oligosaccharide-Mediated Multivalent Carbohydrate-Protein Interactions and Their Heterogeneity

Molecular mechanism of enhancing antitumor activity through the interaction between monosaccharides and human serum albumin

This study investigated the molecular mechanisms of the interactions between three antitumor active monosaccharides and human serum albumin (HSA) using spectroscopic and electrochemical analyses, supplemented by molecular docking simulations. The antitumor efficacy of these monosaccharides can be significantly enhanced by covalent drug coupling, while HSA, with its long half-life and low immunogenicity, provides new opportunities for the development of advanced antitumor drug delivery systems. The results showed that these monosaccharides effectively burst the fluorescence of HSA. Thermodynamic analysis revealed that Fucose undergoes a spontaneous, exothermic process that decreases entropy, while the binding of Mannose and Galactose is entropy-driven. Notably, the addition of these three monosaccharides slightly compacts the structure of HSA, stabilizing its transport and delivery in vivo, with the binding strength categorized as Fucose > Mannose > Galactose. These variations in binding constants explain the differences in efficacy and potential side effects in antitumor therapy. Further studies have shown that the interaction between monosaccharides and HSA improves drug stability and targeting, thereby enhancing antitumor activity. An in-depth study of these interactions may provide new insights into the design and optimization of antitumor drugs and the further development of novel antitumor therapies.

Serum antibody screening using glycan arrays

Humans and other animals produce a diverse collection of antibodies, many of which bind to carbohydrate chains, referred to as glycans. These anti-glycan antibodies are a critical part of our immune systems' defenses. Whether induced by vaccination or natural exposure to a pathogen, anti-glycan antibodies can provide protection against infections and cancers. Alternatively, when an immune response goes awry, antibodies that recognize self-glycans can mediate autoimmune diseases. In any case, serum anti-glycan antibodies provide a rich source of information about a patient's overall health, vaccination history, and disease status. Glycan microarrays provide a high-throughput platform to rapidly interrogate serum anti-glycan antibodies and identify new biomarkers for a variety of conditions. In addition, glycan microarrays enable detailed analysis of the immune system's response to vaccines and other treatments. Herein we review applications of glycan microarray technology for serum anti-glycan antibody profiling.

Catanionic Vesicles as a Facile Scaffold to Display Natural N-Glycan Ligands for Probing Multivalent Carbohydrate-Lectin Interactions

Multivalent interactions are a key characteristic of protein-carbohydrate recognition. Phospholipid-based liposomes have been explored as a popular platform for multivalent presentation of glycans, but this platform has been plagued by the instability of typical liposomal formulations in biological media. We report here the exploitation of catanionic vesicles as a stable lipid-based nanoparticle scaffold for displaying large natural N-glycans as multivalent ligands. Hydrophobic insertion of lipidated N-glycans into the catanionic vesicle bilayer was optimized to allow for high-density display of structurally diverse N-glycans on the outer membrane leaflet. In an enzyme-linked competitive lectin-binding assay, the N-glycan-coated vesicles demonstrated a clear clustering glycoside effect, with significantly enhanced affinity for the corresponding lectins including Sambucus nigra agglutinin (SNA), concanavalin A (ConA), and human galectin-3, in comparison with their respective natural N-glycan ligands. Our results showed that relatively low density of high-mannose and sialylated complex type N-glycans gave the maximal clustering effect for binding to ConA and SNA, respectively, while relatively high-density display of the asialylated complex type N-glycan provided maximal clustering effects for binding to human galectin 3. Moreover, we also observed a macromolecular crowding effect on the binding of ConA to high-mannose N-glycans when catanionic vesicles bearing mixed high-mannose and complex-type N-glycans were used. The N-glycan-coated catanionic vesicles are stable and easy to formulate with varied density of ligands, which could serve as a feasible vehicle for drug delivery and as potent inhibitors for intervening protein-carbohydrate interactions implicated in disease.

Multivalent glycosystems for human lectins

Human lectins are involved in a wide variety of biological processes, both physiological and pathological, which have attracted the interest of the scientific community working in the glycoscience field. Multivalent glycosystems have been employed as useful tools to understand carbohydrate-lectin binding processes as well as for biomedical applications. The review shows the different scaffolds designed for a multivalent presentation of sugars and their corresponding binding studies to lectins and in some cases, their biological activities. We summarise this research by organizing based on lectin types to highlight the progression in this active field. The paper provides an overall picture of how these contributions have furnished relevant information on this topic to help in understanding and participate in these carbohydrate-lectin interactions.

Toward Glycomaterials with Selectivity as Well as Affinity

Multivalent glycosylated materials (polymers, surfaces, and particles) often show high affinity toward carbohydrate binding proteins (e.g., lectins) due to the nonlinear enhancement from the cluster glycoside effect. This affinity gain has potential in applications from diagnostics, biosensors, and targeted delivery to anti-infectives and in an understanding of basic glycobiology. This perspective highlights the question of selectivity, which is less often addressed due to the reductionist nature of glycomaterials and the promiscuity of many lectins. The use of macromolecular features, including architecture, heterogeneous ligand display, and the installation of non-natural glycans, to address this challenge is discussed, and examples of selectivity gains are given.

A Cell-Culture Technique to Encode Glyco-Nanoparticles Selectivity

Nanoparticles (NPs) embedded with bioactive ligands such as carbohydrates, peptides, and nucleic acid have emerged as a potential tool to target biological processes. Traditional in vitro assays performed under statistic conditions may result in non-specific outcome sometimes, mainly because of the sedimentation and self-assembly nature of NPs. Inverted cell-culture assay allows for flexible and accurate detection of the receptor-mediated uptake and cytotoxicity of NPs. By combining this technique with glyco-gold nanoparticles, cellular internalization and cytotoxicity were investigated. Regioselective glycosylation patterns and shapes of the NPs could tune the receptors' binding affinity, resulting in precise cellular uptake of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs). Two cell lines HepG2 and HeLa were probed with galactosamine-embedded fluorescent AuNPs, revealing significant differences in cytotoxicity and uptake mechanism in upright and invert in vitro cell-culture assay, high-specificity toward uptake, and allowing for a rapid screening and optimization technique.

Therapeutic antibodies, targeting the SARS-CoV-2 spike N-terminal domain, protect lethally infected K18-hACE2 mice

Neutralizing antibodies represent a valuable therapeutic approach to countermeasure the current COVID-19 pandemic. Emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants emphasizes the notion that antibody treatments need to rely on highly neutralizing monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), targeting several distinct epitopes for circumventing therapy escape mutants. Previously, we reported efficient human therapeutic mAbs recognizing epitopes on the spike receptor-binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2. Here we report the isolation, characterization, and recombinant production of 12 neutralizing human mAbs, targeting three distinct epitopes on the spike N-terminal domain of the virus. Neutralization mechanism of these antibodies involves receptors other than the canonical hACE2 on target cells, relying both on amino acid and N-glycan epitope recognition, suggesting alternative viral cellular portals. Two selected mAbs demonstrated full protection of K18-hACE2 transgenic mice when administered at low doses and late post-exposure, demonstrating the high potential of the mAbs for therapy of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

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Isolation of potent neutralizing antibodies, targeting the NTD of SARS-CoV-2

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Involvement of both protein and glycan moieties in antibody binding was suggested

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Post-exposure protection of lethally infected K18-hACE2 mice by BLN12 and BLN14

Discovery of rare sulfated N-unsubstituted glucosamine based heparan sulfate analogs selectively activating chemokines

Achieving selective inhibition of chemokines with structurally well-defined heparan sulfate (HS) oligosaccharides can provide important insights into cancer cell migration and metastasis. However, HS is highly heterogeneous in chemical composition, which limits its therapeutic use. Here, we report the rational design and synthesis of N-unsubstituted (NU) and N-acetylated (NA) heparan sulfate tetrasaccharides that selectively inhibit structurally homologous chemokines. HS analogs were produced by divergent synthesis, where fully protected HS tetrasaccharide precursor was subjected to selective deprotection and regioselectively O-sulfated, and O-phosphorylated to obtain 13 novel HS tetrasaccharides. HS microarray and SPR analysis with a wide range of chemokines revealed the structural significance of sulfation patterns and NU domain in chemokine activities for the first time. Particularly, HT-3,6S-NH revealed selective recognition by CCL2 chemokine. Further systematic interrogation of the role of HT-3,6S-NH in cancer demonstrated an effective blockade of CCL2 and its receptor CCR2 interactions, thereby impairing cancer cell proliferation, migration and invasion, a step towards designing novel drug molecules.

Advances in Tools to Determine the Glycan-Binding Specificities of Lectins and Antibodies

Proteins that bind carbohydrate structures can serve as tools to quantify or localize specific glycans in biological specimens. Such proteins, including lectins and glycan-binding antibodies, are particularly valuable if accurate information is available about the glycans that a protein binds. Glycan arrays have been transformational for uncovering rich information about the nuances and complexities of glycan-binding specificity. A challenge, however, has been the analysis of the data. Because protein-glycan interactions are so complex, simplistic modes of analyzing the data and describing glycan-binding specificities have proven inadequate in many cases. This review surveys the methods for handling high-content data on protein-glycan interactions. We contrast the approaches that have been demonstrated and provide an overview of the resources that are available. We also give an outlook on the promising experimental technologies for generating new insights into protein-glycan interactions, as well as a perspective on the limitations that currently face the field.

Carbohydrate supramolecular chemistry: beyond the multivalent effect

(Hetero)multivalency acts as a multichannel switch that shapes the supramolecular properties of carbohydrates in an intrinsically multifactorial biological context.

Heteroglycoclusters With Dual Nanomolar Affinities for the Lectins LecA and LecB From Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Multivalent structures displaying different instead of similar sugar units, namely heteroglycoclusters (hGCs), are stimulating the efforts of glycochemists for developing compounds with new biological properties. Here we report a four-step strategy to synthesize hexadecavalent hGCs displaying eight copies of αFuc and βGal. These compounds were tested for the binding to lectins LecA and LecB from Pseudomonas aeruginosa. While parent fucosylated (19) and galactosylated (20) homoclusters present nanomolar affinity with LecB and LecA, respectively, we observed that hGCs combining these sugars (11 and 13) maintain their binding potency with both lectins despite the presence of an unspecific sugar. The added multivalency is therefore not a barrier for efficient recognition by bacterial receptors and it opens the route for adding different sugars that can be selected for their immunomodulatory properties.