Dear Colleagues,

Carbohydrate recognition plays a vital role in the activation and function of the immune system, but has remained understudied for the important reason that carbohydrates alone cannot bind thymus cells to activate B-cells to produce the highly specialized and matured immunoglobulin-G antibodies. Nevertheless, the immune system has developed an alternative and more intricate biology for the self-activation of B-cells, which largely manifests via the clustering of exogenous glycan antigenic structures on viruses, bacteria, and other intruders, or via the recognition of rare glycosylation signatures on our own cells for remediation purposes. With the advance of modern analytical techniques in glycoproteomics, a growing collection of rare glycan structures are being discovered, localized, and linked to diseases. Tumor-associated carbohydrate antigens found in metaplastic tissues, such as the embryonal Le^x antigen in breast cancer, LacdiNAc in human gastric mucosa, and paucimannosidic glycans in pancreatic and colon cancer, are examples of known targets for lectins of pathogenic microorganisms, but also of carbohydrate-binding antibodies. However, our understanding about how our immune system and our microbiome react to aberrant glycosylation patterns on proteins and cells is still in its infancy.

In this Special Issue, we will focus on recent and rapidly growing progress in our knowledge of carbohydrate recognition in the immune system, by both exogenous and endogenous lectins and antibodies.

Dr. Julie Bouckaert
Dr. Lu-Gang Yu
Guest Editors

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• immune system
• glycosylation signature
• protein-carbohydrate interaction
• tumor-associated carbohydrate antigen
• lectin
• carbohydrate-binding antibody