Anti-glycan antibodies are essential for basic research. Here, Creative Biolabs gives an introduction to the application of anti-glycan antibodies in glycan identification so as to detect and monitor the expression of specific carbohydrate determinants on cell-surface or in other biological samples.

Introduction to Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are composed of a large group of biomolecules with highly diverse structures and exist largely in the form of glycoconjugates on the cell surface or inside cells. Glycans present in glycoconjugates are implicated in a variety of important cellular processes. For instance, glycans on proteins can have a major impact on properties such as bioactivity, folding, trafficking, stability, and half-life. Besides, glycans on the cell surface can modulate the location and residency times of other proteins and can directly mediate cell-cell interactions. Pathogenic glycans can be recognized by receptors of the immune system, leading to immune responses to different pathogens. Moreover, aberrant glycosylation of proteins can contribute to various pathological events such as tumor metastasis and inflammation. Despite that carbohydrates are essential in many ways, the effects and roles of most carbohydrates are difficult to study. Anti-glycan antibodies, therefore, are urgently required to understand the role of carbohydrates/glycans in biological processes.

Learn more: Glycan Identification solutions