GLYCOSWITCH project is aimed to the analysis of structural requisites for recognition and binding between eukaryotic host immune proteins and pathogen cell surface glycoconjugates. These latter represent the keywords of the molecular cross-talk between microbes and eukaryotic host. Actually, complex glycans decorate the cell surface of all living organisms mediating and/or modulating almost all the biological events. They are directly involved in the etiology of several major diseases, spanning from bacterial and viral infections through to cancer and autoimmune disorders. Thus, deciphering the glycome, beyond the current knowledge, holds huge promise to provide new targets and diagnostics for human health and could represent the key to look ‘outside the box’ of current antibiotic paradigms.
Despite the great advances in medicine, infections and their secondary effects remain one of the leading causes of human mortality in the developing world. Considering the increasing number of reported resistant microbial strains, it has been estimated that the deaths attributable to AMR (antimicrobial resistance) every year will be of 10 million in 2050, exceeding all the other major causes of death. As mentioned above, it is nowadays well known that glycans are the principal actors in the interaction of bacteria with host, however the molecular details of several host-pathogen interactions are still not well understood, precluding us the possibility to modulate them in beneficial ways to mankind. In spite of the tremendous advance of knowledge in the field of Glycoscience during the last decade, the comprehension at high resolution of the molecular basis of many pathogen-mediated diseases is still incomplete.
GLYCOSWITCH project strategically combines expertise in distinct aspects of Glycoscience, whose core is organic chemistry and including biochemistry, molecular biology, biophysics and bioinformatics, to explain essential aspects of bacterial glycans recognition by the host immune system, paving the way to the development of novel and effective therapeutic strategies against bacterial infections.
