Final Report Summary - INFECTION GLYCOMICS (Exploring the glycosylation process during infection)
Sensitive mass spectrometry (MS) was used to analyse the regulation of glycosylation and the impact on diseases of glycosylation of proteins. It was shown that infectious bacteria causing stomach cancer will reinfect stomach from the oral cavity and this makes it difficult to prevent reinfection of the bacteria. In addition this result, data form cell culture showed that the glycosylation of the cell culture is altered because of accumulated metabolites in the cell culture, causing a rearrangement of glycosyltransferases in the Golgi. With a focus to the pharmaceutical industry, this data will help in the understanding of the design of industrial cell-culture facilities to produce a reproducible glycosylation and to ensure the quality glycoprotein drugs. Finally, a method was developed to explore the intracellular signalling of intestinal immune cells and it showed that intestinal mast cells triggered by the IgE receptor will temporarily stop the protein synthesis. This result will have significant important in order to understand the mechanism for asthma and inflammation. The project also provided a significant opportunity for the involved researcher to promote his research on an international level, and he has made several contacts in the European community to establish Europe as one of the main leaders in glycomic research. During the period, Dr Karlsson transferred his project to the University of Gothenburg. He is now established in a centre for glycomic research at the Department for Medical Biochemistry in Gothenburg University, and hosted an international workshop in August next year to establish the research policy in Europe and internationally for glycomics and glycobiology (see http://www.biomedicine.gu.se/biomedicine/Charles_Warren_Workshop_III online for further details). After successful technology transfer to his new host he has utilised MS to address glycosylation in biolubrication with relevance to rheumatoid arthritis and identified immunological important glycoepitopes relevant for the development of ovarian cancer. As part of the glycomic centre he has also established a public database of MS data of more than 400 structures characterised by MS (UniCarb-DB, see http://www.unicarb-DB.com online).