Recent advances on smart glycoconjugate vaccines in infections and cancer.

Vaccination is one of the greatest achievements in biomedical research preventing death and morbidity in many infectious diseases through the induction of pathogen-specific humoral and cellular immune responses. Currently, no effective vaccines are available for pathogens with a highly variable antigenic load, such as the human immunodeficiency virus or to induce cellular T-cell immunity in the fight against cancer. The recent SARS-CoV-2 outbreak has reinforced the relevance of designing smart therapeutic vaccine modalities to ensure public health.

Pseudosaccharide functionalized dendrimers as potent inhibitors of DC-SIGN dependent Ebola pseudotyped viral infection.

The development of compounds with strong affinity for the receptor DC-SIGN is a topic of remarkable interest due to the role that this lectin plays in several pathogen infection processes and in the modulation of the immune response. DC-SIGN recognizes mannosylated and fucosylated oligosaccharides in a multivalent manner. Therefore, multivalent carbohydrate systems are required to interact in an efficient manner with this receptor and compete with the natural ligands.