DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY
UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS BOSTON
Our research interests are at the interface of the chemistry and biology of carbohydrates, including organic synthesis, enzymatic synthesis, glycobiology, and drug discovery. Via interacting with protein receptors, carbohydrates play important roles in many fundamental biological processes, such as inflammation, microbial infections, tumor metastasis and immune responses. At the center of investigations in these areas is the study of carbohydrate‒protein interactions, which is hindered by the inaccessibility of oligosaccharides and glycoconjugates in well-defined form. Aiming at changing the feedstock of carbohydrates to related biological studies, the Li lab is developing chemical and chemoenzymatic methods to expedite the assembly of oligosaccharide and mimics with automation. The resultant glycans or glycomimetics are exploited as component of therapeutic vaccines for various diseases including cancer. Members of our group are exposed to the interdisciplinary frontier of glycosciences from chemical/enzymatic synthesis to bioconjugation, immunotherapy and drug discovery.
There are four major directions currently pursued in our group.
The major challenge in oligosaccharide synthesis is the stereoselective construction of glycosidic linkage between monosaccharides. Our goal is to find replacement of glycosidic bond to realize the facile assembly of glycomimetics in automated fashion by utilizing commercial peptide synthesizer.
Carbohydrate synthesis is featured with tedious protection/deprotection process. We are exploring heterocycles as prospect leaving groups that are compatible with hydroxyl group to alleviate the labor-intense protection process.
Nanoparticles serve multipurpose as the solid support to facilitate the enzymatic synthesis of carbohydrate antigen, and as the carrier for targeted delivery of multi-component vaccine.
Taking advantage of the compact functionality on carbohydrate molecules, structural diversity can be built rapidly in the diversity-oriented synthesis.