SweetLab – Oligo-Glycosylation toward glycans of high added value – SweetLab

The SweetLab project is a synergy between an academic laboratory (Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles - ICSN) specialized in the synthesis of natural products and particularly in carbohydrate chemistry and a company (Elicityl - www.elicityl-oligotech.com) created in 2002 as a leader in the marketing of complex oligosaccharides obtained by biotechnology. Natural oligosaccharides are at the source of normal or pathological biological processes (cancer, diabetes, bacterial or viral infections) and their study allows us to understand the phenomena in question but also and above all to propose diagnostic tools and innovative treatments based on these oligosaccharides or their derivatives (vaccines, anti-diabetics, anti-infectives, anti-tumors). Their structures are extremely complex and their syntheses just as much. They can be isolated from living organisms (microorganisms or animals) but their access in large quantities and purity are sometimes problematic. The SweetLab project proposes the synthesis of two major classes of natural oligosaccharides, N-glycans and human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) by (1) an organic synthesis route combining a glycosylation methodology mastered by ICSN and (2) access to oligosaccharide building blocks obtained by biofermentation at Elicityl. The synthetic strategy provides for a block-by-block assembly of the structure of these oligosaccharides and will be faster and more efficient than known synthesis strategies that assemble one by one the monosaccharides constituting these complex natural oligosaccharides. ICSN has developed a direct method for the glycosylation of N-acetyl-glucosamine which is a major constituent of these oligosaccharides. SweetLab will exploit this approach by developing it towards structures of increasing complexity by starting with monosaccharides (WP1) then towards N-glycans (WP2) and finally HMOs (WP3).
SweetLab will make available to researchers complex oligosaccharides of the N-glycan type for which, despite their strong potential, it is currently difficult to envisage applications due to their low availability. In addition, for HMOs, the current offer remains limited to a few oligosaccharides of this family (10-15 structures) while a multitude (nearly a hundred) of oligosaccharides are identifiable in the natural environment but have never been isolated nor studied for their biological implications. SweetLab will therefore work to remove a very important obstacle in biomedical research by allowing academic or industrial researchers to finally have access to these molecules and thus contribute to scientific advances in the field. The new N-glycans and HMOs expected at the end of the project (estimated 2000 new molecules) will allow Elicityl to strengthen its offer of reagents for research and then to propose the development of these biomolecules for their future applications as active ingredients in medical devices, food ingredients or future drugs. SweetLab is a strategic project for the development of Elicityl. It allows the company to always be able to provide its academic and industrial research partners with ever more advanced oligosaccharides at the forefront of the latest scientific discoveries. With the establishment of this joint laboratory, the synergy between ICSN's expertise in glycochemistry and Elicityl's in the production of complex oligosaccharides by biotechnology is the key that makes it possible to achieve the ambitious objectives of this LabCom.