A recent advance­ment is car­bo­hy­drate phar­ma­ceu­tics can poten­tial­ly give way to new gen­er­a­tion of carb-based syn­thet­ic med­ica­tion and diag­nos­tic probes. Researchers as Oxford and York Uni­ver­si­ties have found pos­i­tive indi­ca­tion that about half of the enzymes which bond sug­ar and pro­tein mol­e­cules togeth­er may per­form this job by using a rare type of chem­i­cal reac­tion. This find­ing can lead to cre­ation of new pro­tein-inhibitor based drugs with a broad spec­trum uses in clin­i­cal ther­a­py. Car­bo­hy­drates have been dubbed as the ​‘next fron­tier’ in bio­med­i­cine, but despite their piv­otal role in biol­o­gy, there are sur­pris­ing­ly few carb-based drugs in the mar­ket. Car­bo­hy­drates have been found use­ful as diag­nos­tic and ther­a­peu­tic drugs when it comes to dis­eases like can­cer, Tuber­cu­lo­sis, dia­betes, and var­i­ous heart ail­ments. Thus, the poten­cy of car­bo­hy­drates is not lim­it­ed to being a source of ener­gy, but it expands fur­ther to clin­i­cal appli­ca­tions as well. Let’s see how car­bo­hy­drates direct drug devel­op­ment, and how they can be incor­po­rat­ed clin­i­cal­ly on a large scale so that the dis­eases which were com­plex to treat before can be eas­i­ly tar­get­ed and treated. 

Direct­ing drug development

Gly­co­sy­la­tion is a process in which a car­bo­hy­drate donor, i.e. a gly­co­syl donor is com­bined with a hydrox­yl or any oth­er func­tion­al group to form a poten­tial­ly ther­a­peu­tic com­pound. Sci­en­tists have been striv­ing to unearth the fun­da­men­tals of this process, and are look­ing for effec­tive process­es which may enable them to inves­ti­gate the pro­duc­tion of gly­co­sy­lat­ed pro­teins. There have been many instances when syn­thet­ic mol­e­cules have been used as med­i­cines, but using the process of gly­co­sy­la­tion to gen­er­ate an entire pro­tein can take the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal mar­ket by storm. This way, not only nat­ur­al pro­teins can be mod­i­fied, but new types of syn­thet­ic pro­teins can also be man­u­fac­tured. Researchers at Oxford and York Uni­ver­si­ties applied patent­ed meth­ods in order to gly­co­sy­late pro­teins so that they are able to direct the syn­the­sis of new com­pounds in a tar­get-ori­en­t­ed way. Dis­eases such as Mul­ti­ple Scle­ro­sis can be effec­tive­ly mon­i­tored and diag­nosed if these stud­ies are tak­en fur­ther. There haven’t been in-depth stud­ies on the sub­ject of car­bo­hy­drates as diag­nos­tic and ther­a­peu­tic agents due to their com­plex struc­ture, but their poten­cy has com­pelled the sci­en­tists and man­u­fac­tur­ers to progress fur­ther on carb-based drugs. Wat­son Inter­na­tion­al is one such dis­trib­ut­ing com­pa­ny which has recent­ly launched its car­bo­hy­drates drug line. To view it, please click this link .