Immunization with Outer Membrane Vesicles Displaying Designer Glycotopes Yields Class-Switched, Glycan-Specific Antibodies.

The development of antibodies against specific glycan epitopes poses a significant challenge due to difficulties obtaining desired glycans at sufficient quantity and purity, and the fact that glycans are usually weakly immunogenic. To address this challenge, we leveraged the potent immunostimulatory activity of bacterial outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) to deliver designer glycan epitopes to the immune system. This approach involved heterologous expression of two clinically important glycans, namely polysialic acid (PSA) and Thomsen-Friedenreich antigen (T antigen) in hypervesiculating strains of non-pathogenic Escherichia coli.

Substitute sweeteners: diverse bacterial oligosaccharyltransferases with unique N-glycosylation site preferences.

The central enzyme in the Campylobacter jejuni asparagine-linked glycosylation pathway is the oligosaccharyltransferase (OST), PglB, which transfers preassembled glycans to specific asparagine residues in target proteins. While C. jejuni PglB (CjPglB) can transfer many diverse glycan structures, the acceptor sites that it recognizes are restricted predominantly to those having a negatively charged residue in the -2 position relative to the asparagine.