Carbohydrates are involved in a wide range of biological processes including cell communication and bacteria infections. Carbohydrate-decorated nanomaterials, i.e., glyconanomterials, could be envisioned as cell-mimics, having potential to be used for imaging, diagnostics and therapeutics. Our goal is to develop conjugation chemistries and analytical methods to synthesize and characterize glyconanomterials, and applying them in treating bacterial infections. We have thus developed versatile coupling chemistry for the synthesis of glyconanomaterials that applies to mono-, oligo-, and poly-saccharides, reducing and non-reducing sugars, derivatized and un-derivatized carbohydrates. We developed 4 different methods to determine the binding affinity of glyconanoparticle-lectin interactions, including i) fluorescence competition assay, ii) dynamic light scattering, ii) isothermal titration calorimetry, iv) super-microarray. We conducted comprehensive studies on the impact of ligand presentation on glycan-lectin interactions. Our results demonstrate that the binding affinity of glyconanomaterials is highly influenced by how the ligands are presented on the surface. The results pave the way to tailor-make glyconanomaterials with tunable affinity by ligand display.
Wang, X.; Ramstrom, O.; Yan, M. Glyconanomaterials: Synthesis, Characterization, and Ligand Presentation, (2010) Adv. Mater. 22, 1946.
Wang, X.; Ramstrom, O.; Yan, M. Quantitative Analysis of Multivalent Ligand Presentation on Gold Glyconanoparticles and the Impact on Lectin Binding, (2010) Anal. Chem. 82, 9082.
Chen, X.; Ramstrom, O.; Yan, M. Glyconanomaterials: Emerging applications in biomedical research, (2014) Nano Res. 7, 1381.
Hao, N.; Neranon, K.; Ramstrom, O.; Yan, M. Glyconanomaterials for Biosensing Applications, Biosens. Bioelectron. 2016, 76, 113.
