This lecture will present recent advances in carbohydrate chemistry and biology with emphasis on a scientific research path from discovery research to innovative development to illustrate the important contribution of this field.
Protein glycosylation is the most complex post-translational process; more than 90 percent of human proteins are predicted to be glycosylated. The significance of glycosylation at the molecular level is however not well understood, and as such the pace for the development of carbohydrate-based drug discovery and diagnosis is relatively slow. It is thus important to develop new tools to study the effect of glycosylation on the structure and function of proteins and other biologically active molecules. This presentation will focus on the development of new methods for the synthesis of homogeneous glycoproteins with well defined glycan structure, study of glycosylation effect on protein folding, development of glycan arrays for disease diagnosis and for the high-throughput analysis of protein-glycan interaction, and design of carbohydrate-based therapeutics and vaccines to tackle the problems of cancer and infectious diseases.
