Synbiocarb Innovative Training Network company information, Employees & Contact Information

synBIOcarb brings together a diverse team of chemists, structural biologists, biophysicists, cell biologists and protein engineers who are pioneering the development of Synthetic Glycobiology, and four SMEs that are leading industrial innovation in glycoscience and protein engineering. It will provide advanced scientific training in the enabling technologies that underpin the development and exploitation of glycoscience for diagnostics and targeted drug delivery. Practical scientific training will be complemented by a coordinated programme of industry-relevant transferable skills, that will prepare the next generation of researchers for future careers in the medical technologies sector. Synthetic Glycobiology can be defined as re-engineering carbohydrates, carbohydrate-active enzymes and carbohydrate-binding proteins for new and useful purposes. Every living cell is covered in a coating of complex carbohydrates and so anything that approaches the cell membrane must descend through this forest of carbohydrates. The interaction of these carbohydrates with enzymes and proteins is an essential part of healthy cell activity but at the same time many parasites, viruses, bacteria and their toxins exploit these mechanisms to colonise tissues and enter cells. Understanding such processes can lead to new methods for diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases. In addition the carbohydrate coating of cells changes when they become cancerous so that many of their carbohydrate structures become over-expressed, or uniquely expressed making them useful cancer biomarkers that can be exploited for diagnosis, or targeted immunotherapies/drug delivery. Our growing understanding of glycoscience, and the advent of chemical and synthetic biology methodologies, presents an opportunity to redesign and synthesise these biological components for diverse analytical, diagnostic and targeted therapeutic applications. This is the field of Synthetic Glycobiology.