In the past decades, the glycoconjugate vaccine has been proved to be a successful strategy for preventing infectious diseases. However, many diseases remain to be controlled, CD BioGlyco focuses on the development of methods for glycoconjugate vaccine design to timely develop tools needed to fight emerging infections and/or address currently unmet medical needs.

Glycoconjugate Vaccine

In contrast to the corresponding polysaccharide vaccines, glycoconjugate vaccines have diverse and complex structures, which include polysaccharide or oligosaccharide fragments linked to different carrier proteins through various coupling chemistries. Moreover, glycoconjugate vaccines overcome the limitations often associated with the use of unconjugated polysaccharide vaccines, such as the inability to evoke immune memory or the production of long-lived antibodies in children under 2 years old. The general structure of glycoconjugate vaccines is composed of carbohydrate B-cell epitopes and proteins or peptides that provide T-helper epitopes to ensure T-dependent memory response.

Glycoconjugate vaccines are cost-effective tools for the prevention of major infectious diseases such as pneumonia and meningitis. The widespread use of vaccination in developed and emerging countries is predicted to increase the global demand for such vaccines in the coming decades. Current advances in several fields such as emerging methods for carbohydrate production, mass spectrometry methods for sugar fingerprinting analysis, glycoengineering, and glycan-protein coupling technology have reduced the time required for antigen identification and vaccine design, promoting the development of glycoconjugate vaccines.

Fig.1 Mechanism of T cell activation by glycoconjugate vaccines: a new working model. (Avci, 2011)

Our Solutions

Faced with the increased complexity of future vaccines and the need to shorten vaccine release times, CD BioGlyco has developed faster methods for glycoconjugate vaccine design. Our solutions include but are not limited to:

• Strategies for accelerating oligosaccharide synthesis for vaccine development: (a) chemical methods, (b) enzymatic methods, and (c) automated synthetic methods.
• E. coli glycoprotein production for reducing manufacturing process steps and analytical controls by combining glycan assembly and conjugation to the carrier system in one step.
• Glyconanoparticle vaccine is a method for the rapid production of glycoconjugates. In this strategy, liposome encapsulation of polysaccharides potentially enables the rapid and easy assembly of multiple polysaccharide antigens in the same formulation.

Applications

• Prevention of dramatic infectious diseases
• Development of smart glycoconjugate vaccines in cancer
• Improving the safety and efficacy of glycovaccines

Advantages of Us

• Methodologies for faster and more affordable vaccine production
• Higher batch-to-batch reproducibility
• Simplified manufacturing processes
• High-quality products

Combined with the development and advancement of novel methods in glycoconjugate vaccine development, CD BioGlyco is working to further improve the new technologies and expand their application to new targets and consolidate their value for human vaccines. We are well-positioned to help our clients develop vaccines for unmet medical needs. If you need our scientific assistance, please feel free to contact us.

References:

1. Micoli, F.; et al . Glycoconjugate vaccines: current approaches towards faster vaccine design. Expert Rev Vaccines. 2019, 18(10):1-15.
2. Avci, F.Y.; et al. A novel mechanism for glycoconjugate vaccine activation of the adaptive immune system. Nature Medicine. 2011, 17(12):1602-9.