Our latest work into the design of new materials to inhibit toxins has been published in JPOLA. We urgently need new strategies to combat bacterial (as well as viral and fungal) infections due to the rise of antimicrobial resistance and the rapid evolution of some pathogens. Many pathogens, such as cholera or E.Coli secrete toxic proteins which bind to carbohydrates on our cell surfaces leading, which is their first step in infection. We have a major research program into the design and synthesis of new materials which can act as decoys for these toxins, preventing the infection from occurring. In this work, we evaluated a new range of polymers which instead of just having a single monosaccharide displayed multiple different ones. Our new synthetic strategy enabled this, and the rapid testing of the polymers ability to inhibit toxins. We showed that polymers bearing two difference sugars often were more potent inhibitors than those with just a single sugar, and this seemed to be linked the total capacity of binding (i.e. how many toxins the polymer can capture) rather than the actual affinity.

Read the paper here

Comparison of Systematically-Functionalized Heterogeneous and Homogenous Glycopolymers as Toxin Inhibitors.