Current Status of Fucanomics and Galactanomics in Drug Discovery and Glycomics

Abstract

Although many biomedical applications for sulfated fucans and galactans have been discovered over the past two decades, only in inflammation, hemostasis, cancer, and vascular biology have their mechanisms of action satisfactorily elucidated to a real contribution in drug development. Moreover, advanced structure-function relationships have been achieved only for the anticoagulant and antithrombotic activities, in which glycans of well-defined structures have been assayed. Here, the current status, and the remaining challenges of fucanomics and galactanomics in drug discovery and in glycomics are briefly discussed.