Towards an acetal-free TF antigen synthesized from galactose
Type of Proposal
Oral Presentation
Faculty
Faculty of Science
Faculty Sponsor
Dr. John F. Trant
Proposal
The application of carbohydrate chemistry for modifying biological functions is becoming increasingly prevalent in biomedicine. Carbohydrate vaccines can be used to treat disease, including bacterial and viral infections, autoimmune responses, and cancer. The TF antigen is a simple disaccharide that is only found on cancer cells, never on healthy cells. If the immune system can be trained to respond to these TF antigens, and target them, we could use a cancer patient’s own immune system to fight off the cancer. However, there is a factor restricting this approach--a very short half-life for any carbohydrate in the body (hours). This is due to various enzymes in the body that break down the TF antigen; our bodies are very good at digesting sugars! This project's focus is to produce a more stable version of the TF antigen so that it will survive longer in our bodies, giving our immune system time to target it, which leads to a higher biological impact. This can happen with the replacement of exocyclic oxygen with a methylene group, which makes it more stable towards the harsh conditions prevalent in the body. A second problem is that the immune system is not good at seeing carbohydrates. This problem could be solved by adding multiple copies of the same sugar onto any vaccine system. This presentation will discuss both this synthesis of the TF antigen, and our approach to load many copies of this antigen on supports to make new classes of synthetic vaccines. This will help improve our fundamental understanding of both carbohydrate chemistry and vaccinology.
Start Date
23-3-2018 12:40 PM
End Date
23-3-2018 2:00 PM
Location
Alumni Auditorium A
Special Considerations
Joy-Lynn Kobti*, Ali Barazi*
*Joint first authors and presenters
Towards an acetal-free TF antigen synthesized from galactose
Alumni Auditorium A
The application of carbohydrate chemistry for modifying biological functions is becoming increasingly prevalent in biomedicine. Carbohydrate vaccines can be used to treat disease, including bacterial and viral infections, autoimmune responses, and cancer. The TF antigen is a simple disaccharide that is only found on cancer cells, never on healthy cells. If the immune system can be trained to respond to these TF antigens, and target them, we could use a cancer patient’s own immune system to fight off the cancer. However, there is a factor restricting this approach--a very short half-life for any carbohydrate in the body (hours). This is due to various enzymes in the body that break down the TF antigen; our bodies are very good at digesting sugars! This project's focus is to produce a more stable version of the TF antigen so that it will survive longer in our bodies, giving our immune system time to target it, which leads to a higher biological impact. This can happen with the replacement of exocyclic oxygen with a methylene group, which makes it more stable towards the harsh conditions prevalent in the body. A second problem is that the immune system is not good at seeing carbohydrates. This problem could be solved by adding multiple copies of the same sugar onto any vaccine system. This presentation will discuss both this synthesis of the TF antigen, and our approach to load many copies of this antigen on supports to make new classes of synthetic vaccines. This will help improve our fundamental understanding of both carbohydrate chemistry and vaccinology.