We are pleased to announce that glyXera, in a joint effort with the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems and the Hannover Medical School, has successfully published a research article in Molecules with the title “Reliable N-Glycan Analysis–Removal of Frequently Occurring Oligosaccharide Impurities by Enzymatic Degradation“ as part of the special issue “Capillary Electrophoresis Analysis: Trends and Recent Advances”.

A frequently occurring problem in glycan analysis is the contamination of a sample with free oligosaccharides. They are encountered in tissue-, cell culture-, or isolated glycoprotein-derived samples, negatively affecting the reliability of glycan analyses by mass spectrometry, capillary electrophoresis, or liquid chromatography. These ubiquitous oligosaccharide impurities typically are linear glucose chains that often present as ladder like signal patterns. Up to now, the conventional approach to ensure reliable analyses is to remove these oligosaccharide impurities from the samples prior to the enzymatic release of the glycans. However, these upstream sample purification steps are usually time-consuming, laborious, require larger sample amounts, and often fail to remove all oligosaccharide impurities.

Illustration of oligosaccharide impurities in glycan analysis

As presented in the article, we approached this challenging problem in a completely different way. We successfully established a novel treatment for already dye-labeled samples utilizing a set of suitable enzymes to degrade, and thus remove common oligosaccharide impurities. We developed this approach leveraging the high-throughput capacities of glyXera’s patented glyXboxCE technology, demonstrating the treatment’s compatibility with existing high-performance analytical workflows. Hence, integration of this fast and easy enzymatic treatment into established sample preparation procedures should be considered. We expect this straightforward approach to become an invaluable tool for obtaining a true glycan picture from complex samples.

The article is published open access and can be read in full on the publication web page: https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/28/4/1843.

For more information on how to remove oligosaccharide impurities from glycan samples, or if you would like to learn more about our glycoanalytical products, including glyXboxCE, please feel free to get in touch.