A €7.2m research centre that opens today at NUI Galway will study how sugars control what goes on inside our cells, writes LORNA SIGGINS
IRELAND COULD become a global “centre of excellence” for research into glycosciences, also known as the “sugar code”, according to the leader of a new international cluster spearheaded by NUI Galway (NUIG).
The cluster, co-ordinated by Prof Lokesh Joshi of NUIG, is offering 17 research posts as part of a €7.2 million programme backed by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and industry.
The programme is due to be inaugurated at NUIG today by Minister of State for Science and Technology Conor Lenihan. It involves Irish and north American investigation teams from four universities – three in Ireland and the US University of Texas – and one State agency, Teagasc.
It is backed by a number of companies involved in biopharmaceuticals, biostatistical analysis, probiotics and analytical instrument manufacturing, with some €2.2 million of the total funding coming from industry.
The programme drawn up by the Alimentary Glycoscience Research Cluster (ARGC), as it is known, aims to explore the important roles played by complex sugars (glycans) in the gut and its relationship with pathogenic and probiotic bacteria.
This collaborative research programme drawn up by UCD, UCC and the NIBRT will contribute to the discovery of novel diagnostic markers for pathogenic diseases and potential drugs along with nutraceuticals, Joshi says.
The AGRC team is also creating technical platforms and combining scientific knowledge which will benefit wider medical research, including work on immune systems, detecting early signs of cancer and regeneration, among other areas, he explains.
Glycans or sugars “coat” cells in the way that grass covers soil, and are central to almost all essential biological functions and many diseases, he says. There are many different types of sugars, and concentrations can be found in the human gut, which represents the “densest ecosystem on the planet”, he says.
Understanding these sugars and identifying their differences and importance has been a relatively new area of research, which Joshi focused on in his last posting as associate professor at Arizona State University’s department of biomedical engineering and director of the Centre for Glycosciences and Technology.
The body carries along with it up to 100 trillion bacteria, many times more than the number of cells that we contain. Most of these bacteria live in our gut and 99 per cent of these are “friendly”. However, a small fraction are pathogenic, he says.
Sugars bound to proteins can be beneficial in certain environments – boosting the immune system in the case of mother’s milk, or milk generally. Certain sugars found in milk, teardrop fluid and also urine also have the ability to bind to bugs and wash them off.
“The sugars are like “clothing”, he says - different on different cells. A research goal is to come up with a diagnostic test that can detect if certain factors are present or absent - creating in turn new drugs to break the communication between sugars and harmful pathogens or malignant tissues, Joshi explains.
Sugars are also critical for the half-life and activity of many glycoproteins drugs. Sales of glycoprotein drugs to treat various illnesses are big business. The market has risen from a worldwide annual value of $33 billion (€24bn) in 2004 to an estimated $70 billion (€50.7bn) in 2010.
However, Joshi estimates that a certain percentage of these drugs don’t work – mainly due to a failure to fully understand how sugars are affecting the drugs in the body and how to “engineer” them, he says.
Currently, technology in glycoscience is limited, and the cluster also hopes to devise new technologies, such as rapid analytical platforms, which could then be used in general medical laboratory environments.
“There’s so much funding in research on treatment oriented research, but not so much on early detection, for example in cancer and infectious diseases – which is where we come in,” he says.
The possibilities are endless, he believes. There are direct applications for the food industry, for nutraceuticals and biopharmaceuticals. There are further dimensions – why is it that certain marine species, such as starfish, can regenerate lost tissue?
Studies have shown that removal of certain glycans can promote some growth on a cellular level, thereby facilitating central nervous system regeneration, he says. “But do certain glycans also have a role in inhibiting same?”