HUDSON, N.H. — S-BIO1 has launched BlotGlyco® O-Glycan Sample Preparation Kit, a breakthrough new product that enables scientists to analyze O-glycans in biological samples and biotherapeutic glycoproteins, in a simple, safe and streamlined operation. The kit is a valuable tool supporting customers in glycoprotein characterization for bioprocess development and biomarker research, previously a challenging technique.

Glycans are sugar chains composed of linear and/or branched sequences of several carbohydrates. Changes in glycosylation are often a hallmark of disease states such as cancers, virus infection, etc. Characterizing the changes in glycosylation associated with cancer and chronic inflammation can lead to new therapeutic and diagnostic strategies.

In biotherapeutics development, such as antibody drugs, it has been shown that glycans influence their yield, efficacy, immunogenicity and stability of the biotherapeutic agent. Glycans on glycoproteins, in general, are classified as N-glycans or O-glycans2 according to their attachment site in proteins. For the detailed analysis of glycans, researchers need to isolate glycans with an appropriate method for characterization.

The BlotGlyco® O-Glycan Sample Preparation Kit consists of O-Glycan Releasing Reagent and BlotGlyco®3 beads. O-Glycan release in this kit is based on a chemical treatment with an ammonium salt that is far innocuous than conventional methods and effective for unbiased mild O-glycan release from glycoproteins. The released O-glycans are further enriched using BlotGlyco® beads that can be detected with HPLC, LC-MS, MALDI-TOF MS or CE using customer’s choice of label.

The new BlotGlyco® O-Glycan Sample Preparation Kit will be available in the U.S. through S-BIO, Vaupell Holdings Inc. (www.s-bio.com), a Sumitomo Bakelite Co., Ltd. group company. S-BIO also offers the BlotGlyco® Purification and labeling Kit for N-glycan sample preparation.