We are pleased to announce that a successful collaboration between glyXera and Kaleido Biosciences (Lexington, MA, USA) resulted in the publication of an article in Nature Communications with the title “Synthetic glycans control gut microbiome structure and mitigate colitis in mice”.
The bacterial composition of the mammalian gut microbiome has been reported to be associated with various pathologies. As different intestinal bacteria vary in their ability to metabolize specific glycans, an opportunity to promote overall health presents itself by supporting individual beneficial species within the microbiome through careful administration of tailored glycan mixtures.
In the published article we describe the properties and therapeutic potential of chemically diverse synthetic glycans. Through control of starting materials and reaction conditions, libraries of hundreds of synthetic glycans with different binding types and degrees of polymerization were synthesized. By combining several analytical methods, utilizing their individual benefits, a detailed characterization of these highly complex glycan mixtures was performed as a prerequisite to investigating their metabolic influence on the microbiome composition in mouse models. In total, 653 synthetic glycan libraries, in addition to 110 commercially available reference glycans, were selected for culture-based growth and metabolite assays. These synthetic glycans offer a wide range of targeted alterations to the microbiome and potentially open up promising new avenues for disease prevention and treatment.
The article is published open access and can be read in full on the publication web page: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28856-x
If you would like to learn more about glyXera’s high-performance xCGE-LIF technology and its applications in the characterization of highly complex glycan mixtures or in biomarker discovery, please feel free to get in touch.