Scientists create carbohydrate synthesizer

German scientists say they have created an automated carbohydrate synthesizer that can create carbohydrate molecules within only a few hours.

Professor Peter Seeberger of the Max-Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany, and the Free University of Berlin described the synthesizer in Salt Lake City this week during a meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Our automated synthesizer is now the fastest method to make complex carbohydrates, said Seeberger, principal investigator for the research. There are currently no competitive methods available. Today, if people working in biology run into a problem related to carbohydrates, they usually drop it because there are no tools available. They can’t buy anything from a catalog. It becomes a royal pain in the neck.

He said the carbohydrate synthesizer might do the same thing for the emerging fields of glycochemistry and glycobiology as the invention of the automated DNA and protein synthesizers for genetics and proteomics.

Seeberger’s group used the carbohydrate synthesizer to develop a malaria vaccine. Clinical trials for that vaccine are scheduled next year in the African nations of Mozambique and Tanzania.

Seeberger is commercializing the carbohydrate synthesizer through his start-up company, Ancora Pharmaceuticals of Medford, Mass.