Carbohydrate Chronicles Carbohydrate Chronicles

Carbohydrate chemistry, the final frontier. These ubiquitous building blocks of life are still the most challenging biomolecules to manipulate due to their structural diversity and complexity. A realm where only the bravest creative chemists can go, to deeply understand their biological importance, explore and embrace their therapeutic value. The use of carbohydrates as actives is an emerging field with a vast potential in several areas like cancer treatment, rare diseases or infections.

Our guest today is László Somsák, Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Debrecen, Expert in the synthesis of glycomimetics and biologically active carbohydrates. 

László has been working at Debrecen University for exactly 40 years now, with a main research interest in designing novel synthetic routes to create carbohydrates, and discover glycomimetics, glycopeptidomimetics, and lectin inhibitors. He is a board member of nearly all local and international carbohydrate organizations and serves in the editorial board of the prestigious journal, CarboHydrate Research. He has almost 400 publications available on the topic. 

As we already learned in the past weeks, glycoscience is certainly an interdisciplinary subject where both chemistry and biology play a critical role in understanding and success. Steering a ship in these waters is a very complex challenge that needs focus and persistence.

Our guest this week, Barbara Richichi, Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Florence is a captain on such a ship and will help us understand how carbohydrates could be used as building blocks of complex nanomaterials and how glycomimetics are designed. 

Barbara’s lab (GlycoFluoNano) is engaged in three main areas of Glycoscience that are at the interface between Glycochemistry and Glycobiology, specifically in the: i) synthesis of glycomimetics and glycan-based therapeutics; ii) synthesis and functionalization of glyconanomaterials; and iii) the synthesis of fluorescent probes. 

For decades, scientists lived in a paradigm that cyclodextrins are useful excipients and additives with numerous applications and that’s it. The pioneers came and broke these chains, releasing the true potential of these molecules. First Sugammadex was discovered (which is now a blockbuster drug), and later long known cyclodextrins were re-purposed as active ingredients for various therapeutic indications. Some of these developments are now in phase III and II clinical trials for a rare genetic indication and Alzheimer’s disease.

Research started to flourish both in the academia and industry, and companies like Cyclarity Therapeutics were incorporated focusing on cyclodextrin-based drug discovery and development. Today, our guest is Dr Matthew ‘Oki’ O’Connor, founder and co-CEO of Cyclarity Tx. 

Oki is a true longevity warrior, who dedicated all his professional career to this research area. After finishing his studies, Oki almost immediately joined SENS Research Foundation as head of research developing, promoting, and ensuring widespread access to therapies that cure and prevent the diseases and disabilities of aging which he left for Cyclarity eventually. He is also a board member of the Longevity Biotech Fellowship and Senior Reviewer of Vitadao, a decentralized collective funding initiative for early-stage longevity research. 

Over the past weeks, we have talked a lot about Glycoscience and research in this field. But what happens with these compounds and inventions once they fulfill the dream? They get commercialized and manufactured and they start their true journey in the pharmaceutical industry. Roquette Fréres is one of the world’s biggest excipient manufacturers and certainly a leader in sugars and cyclodextrins. Our guest today is Elham Blouet, Global Market Manager for injectables and regional head of biopharma technologies at Roquette.

Elham has a very unique career path that led to her position at Roquette. She has done research work at university, been a responsible pharmacist in a company producing sterile medical devices, has teaching experience with pharmacists assistants and pharmacists, and worked at French Health Competent Authorities, which all led to her way to Roquette, where she also served in different positions. 

In earlier episodes, we have touched the topic of cyclodextrin based drug delivery and even nanotechnology, yet today, with our guest, Erem Bilensoy, we are taking a deep dive. As we will hear today, cyclodextrins are not only capable of solubilizing and stabilizing actives, but in good hands also to remove toxic molecules from the body, enhance cellular delivery, compose targeted drug delivery systems and much more. The possibilities are truly infinite.

Welcome Erem Bilensoy, Professor of Pharmaceutical Technology at Hacettepe University and Owner and CSO at BioGalenica.

Erem’s main research related not only to cyclodextrins but pharmaceutical technology and nanoparticle based drug delivery in general. He has authored close to 100 papers and 15 book chapters. Apart from the academic career, industry has also been present in his life, in 2021 she founded her company BioGalenica and she is the president of the European Federation for Pharmaceutical Sciences EUFEPS. Her current research interests include targeted nanoparticles in cancer therapy, cholesterol-targeted nanoparticles to overcome multidrug drug resistance and enhance cellular delivery, applications of proteomics, metabolomics and lipidomics to develop nanomedicines. 

We already had some interviews with researchers focusing on
cyclodextrins, yet no one may understand these compounds' true nature and chemical behavior like our guest today, Matthieu Sollogoub. He is less interested in the traditional uses of cyclodextrins within the pharma industry, like small molecule solubilization and stabilization and focuses much more on creating unique compounds with future and unbelievable applications, truly moonshot goals.

Matthieu is a Professor at Sorbonne Université and President of the Organic Division of the French Chemical Society, yet above all, one of the world’s leading experts in cyclodextrin and carbohydrate medicinal chemistry.

Matthieu is the author of almost 150 scientific publications, several books chapters and patents despite his young age and being one of the most acknowledged key opinion leaders in cyclodextrin chemistry. His background is in chemistry, and he focuses on creating novel cyclodextrins for innovative applications. He has been working as a full professor at Sorbonne for 15 years now and leads maybe the largest carbohydrate (cyclodextrin) chemistry group in Europe.