ABSTRACT
A key lesson emerging from COVID-19 is that pandemic proofing planetary health against future ecological crises calls for systems science and preventive medicine innovations. With greater proximity of the human and animal natural habitats in the 21st century, it is also noteworthy that zoonotic infections such as COVID-19 that jump from animals to humans are increasingly plausible in the coming decades. In this context, glycomics technologies and the third alphabet of life, the sugar code, offer veritable prospects to move omics systems science from discovery to diverse applications of relevance to global public health and preventive medicine. In this expert review, we discuss the science of glycomics, its importance in vaccine development, and the recent progress toward discoveries on the sugar code that can help prevent future infectious outbreaks that are looming on the horizon in the 21st century. Glycomics offers veritable prospects to boost planetary health, not to mention the global scientific capacity for vaccine innovation against novel and existing infectious agents.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 Vaccines/administration & dosage , COVID-19/epidemiology , Glycomics/organization & administration , Pandemics/prevention & control , SARS-CoV-2/pathogenicity , Zoonoses/epidemiology , Animals , COVID-19/immunology , COVID-19/prevention & control , COVID-19/transmission , COVID-19 Vaccines/biosynthesis , Ecosystem , Global Health/economics , Global Health/trends , Humans , International Cooperation , Mass Vaccination/methods , Preventive Medicine/methods , SARS-CoV-2/drug effects , Spike Glycoprotein, Coronavirus/chemistry , Spike Glycoprotein, Coronavirus/immunology , Vaccines, Synthetic/administration & dosage , Vaccines, Synthetic/biosynthesis , Zoonoses/immunology , Zoonoses/prevention & control , Zoonoses/transmission , mRNA VaccinesABSTRACT
The Human Proteome Organisation Human Disease Glycomics/Proteome Initiative recently coordinated a multi-institutional study that evaluated methodologies that are widely used for defining the N-glycan content in glycoproteins. The study convincingly endorsed mass spectrometry as the technique of choice for glycomic profiling in the discovery phase of diagnostic research. The present study reports the extension of the Human Disease Glycomics/Proteome Initiative's activities to an assessment of the methodologies currently used for O-glycan analysis. Three samples of IgA1 isolated from the serum of patients with multiple myeloma were distributed to 15 laboratories worldwide for O-glycomics analysis. A variety of mass spectrometric and chromatographic procedures representative of current methodologies were used. Similar to the previous N-glycan study, the results convincingly confirmed the pre-eminent performance of MS for O-glycan profiling. Two general strategies were found to give the most reliable data, namely direct MS analysis of mixtures of permethylated reduced glycans in the positive ion mode and analysis of native reduced glycans in the negative ion mode using LC-MS approaches. In addition, mass spectrometric methodologies to analyze O-glycopeptides were also successful.
