Carbs on the menu

Post-doctoral researcher Dr Nicole Miller has been synthesising high-value, hard-to-produce compounds known as glycosides for sale through GlycoSyn's Australian joint venture, Mimotopes.

For the past few months, post-doctoral researcher Dr Nicole Miller has been leveraging GlycoSyn’s world-class carbohydrate chemistry expertise and scale-up facilities in an NZTE-funded project to synthesise high-value, hard-to-produce compounds known as glycosides for sale through GlycoSyn’s Australian joint venture, Mimotopes.

Glycosides – conjugates between an amino acid and a sugar – are the key building blocks for the synthesis of glycopeptides, which are naturally occurring compounds that play critical biological roles in functions such as cell signalling, neuronal development and the human immune system, says Dr Miller.

These building blocks are sought after by molecular biologists, protein chemists, immunologists and medical doctors. However, a jumble of different mixes of sugars within the same molecule mean they are notoriously hard to isolate from natural compounds, making it difficult to figure out which compounds are most important.

“With our readily available compounds, biologists can easily determine the necessary glycosylation pattern required for biological activity. We deliver a synthetic platform that other researchers can use to mimic nature and to develop synthetic drugs,” she says.
 
Dr Miller, who studied in Ulm and Heidelberg, worked with Dr Margaret Brimble’s world-renowned organic and medicinal chemistry group at Auckland University for two years on the synthesis of glycopeptides and neoglycopeptides before joining the project with GlycoSyn’s senior process development chemist Dr Peter Kelly in Lower Hutt.

“In Auckland we were already working with these compounds so we know it is an interesting market to develop them on a larger scale.”

GlycoSyn account manager Dr Tony Davidson describes the project as one that takes research out of the lab at Auckland, leads it through the commercialisation pathway at GlycoSyn, and delivers a high-value end product through the Mimotopes website, a large player in the peptide space with a long track record and large client list.

“Utilising both the expertise of the Brimble group in peptides and the experience at GlycoSyn in scaling up carbohydrates has allowed the development of several high-value glycopeptide intermediates,” he says.

The first batch of glycopeptide intermediates have already been shipped and can be purchased via the Mimotopes website, www.mimotopes.com.