Modification and application of glycosidases to create homogeneous glycoconjugates

In the post-genomic era, recognition of the importance of sugars is increasing in biological research. For the precise analysis of their functions, homogeneous materials are required. Chemical synthesis is a powerful tool for preparation of homogeneous oligosaccharides and glycoconjugates. Glycosidases are potent catalysts for this purpose because they realize high stereo- and regio- selectivities under conditions benign to biomolecules without repetitive protection/deprotection procedures. A glycosynthase is an aritificial enzyme which is derived from a glycosidase and is devised for glycosylation reaction. To suppress the mechanistically inherent oligomerization side reaction of this class of biocatalysts, a glycosidase with plastic substrate recognition was engineered to afford the first α-mannosynthase. This novel biocatalyst showed low occurrence of oligomerized products as designed and was applied to prepare a wide range of oligosaccharides. Glycosidases are also valuable tools for glycan engineering of glycoconjugates, which is a pivotal issue in the development of pharmaceutical agents, including immunoglobulin G (IgG)-based drugs. EndoS, an endo-β-N-acetylglucosaminidase from Streptococcus pyogenes, natively cleaves N-glycans on IgG specifically. When the latent glycosylation activity of this enzyme was applied, the N-glycan remodelling of full-length IgG was successfully achieved for the first time and a highly pure glycoform was obtained using the chemically synthesized oxazoline tetrasaccharide as glycosyl donor. This biocatalytic reaction allows development of a novel type of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) in which drug molecules are linked to N-glycans site-specifically. For this purpose, glycans with bioorthogonal reaction handles were synthesized and conjugated to IgG. A model reaction using a dye compound as reaction partner worked successfully and the synthetic method for this newly designed ADC was validated. Glycan trimming of glycoproteins expressed from Pichia pastoris was performed using exoglycosidases to derive homogeneous glycoform. Jack Bean α-mannosidase (JBM) trimmed native N-glycans down to the core trisaccharide structure but some of the glycoforms were discovered to be resistant to the JBM activity. Enzymatic analyses using exoglycosidases suggested that the JBM-resistant factor was likely to be β-mannoside. In summary, this work advanced application of modified glycosidases for preparation of oligosaccharides and also demonstrated biocatalytic utility of glycosidases to produce biologically relevant glycoconjugates with homogeneous glycoforms.