Metabolic polysaccharide functionalization for industrial applications – Proof of concept with a cholera vaccine – IngeniOse

The production of high-added-value molecules from biological resources often involves the chemical transformation of the bio-sourced material to allow its conjugation to a molecular platform, a drug or a carrier. The advent of bioorthogonal conjugation techniques together with metabolic glycan engineering offers new opportunities for the elaboration of bio-sourced polysaccharides for various industrial applications. This interdisciplinary project aims at establishing a proof of concept, via the adaptation of metabolic lipopolysaccharide engineering. This bacterial labeling methodology, recently introduced by us, relies on the culture of bacteria in the presence of modified sugars such as 8-azido-3,8-dideoxy-D-manno-oct-2-ulosonic acid, which are further incorporated into surface polysaccharides during their biosynthesis. This methodology will be exploited as a straightforward and efficient strategy to produce new, well-defined glycoconjugate vaccines targeted against cholera, a diarrheal disease remaining a major public health concern and later extended to other bacterial pathogens like Klebsiella or Pseudomonas.