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CHEMISTRY 2000

CHEMISTRY 2000. Topics of Interest #9: Carbohydrate Synthesizer. Why Make Carbohydrates?. Many bacteria are coated in a lipopolysaccharide (LPS) layer:. Image from Cardoso et al. Microbial Cell Factories 2006 5 :13 DOI:10.1186/1475-2859-5-13. Why Make Carbohydrates?.

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CHEMISTRY 2000

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  1. CHEMISTRY 2000 Topics of Interest #9: Carbohydrate Synthesizer

  2. Why Make Carbohydrates? • Many bacteria are coated in a lipopolysaccharide (LPS) layer: Image from Cardoso et al.Microbial Cell Factories 2006 5:13 DOI:10.1186/1475-2859-5-13

  3. Why Make Carbohydrates? • LPS consists of a lipid (fat) attached to a polysaccharide (string of sugars). It is toxic and elicits a response from the immune system. • Different strains of bacteria have different polysaccharides in their LPS. When we produce antibodies against the polysaccharides for a particular strain, our immune system can defend against it. • Many vaccines contain dead cells or cell fragments to train our bodies to produce antibodies against that particular strain. What if we could just make the polysaccharide part of the LPS? If that was easy, it would allow for development of large quantities of vaccine without needing to grow then neutralize large numbers of cells. • Viruses, protozoa, etc. also have surface polysaccharides that can be recognized by our immune system in the same way and potentially used in vaccines.

  4. Why Not Make Carbohydrates? • Until now, making even short polysaccharides has been difficult because there are so many different hydroxy groups (-OH) and we would want to use specific ones to connect the chains. This poses a more difficult problem than making proteins from amino acids (each of which has two distinct reactive groups – an amine and a carboxylic acid) or making DNA or RNA from nucleic acids (each of which, again, has two distinct reactive groups). Protein synthesizers and DNA/RNA synthesizers are already widely used in chemical, biochemical and biological labs.

  5. Why Not Make Carbohydrates? • In 2001, a group of German chemists reported that they had made progress toward the development of a carbohydrate synthesizer analogous to the existing protein and DNA synthesizers. • This March, they reported that the technology was successful enough that they have used it to develop a candidate for a malaria vaccine. This vaccine will undergo clinical testing next year in Mozambique and Tanzania. • The complete details of the synthesizer were not released as the group intends to commercialize the technology; however, some of the work was presented at this year’s National Meeting of the American Chemical Society. Source: American Chemical Society http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PP_ARTICLEMAIN&node_id=222&content_id=WPCP_012401&use_sec=true&sec_url_var=region1&__uuid=

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