GLYCOTwinning: Building Networks to Excel in Glycosciences

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Glycoscience is a multidisciplinary research area focusing on the role of glycans in health and disease. The field is expanding rapidly worldwide, driving innovation in biomedical sciences and becoming an essential part of modern science, including medicine, and providing bases for understanding human diseases and tools for personalized medicine. GLYCOTwinning is a capacity-building network with the ambitious goal to provide a breakthrough in the research of the Applied Biomolecular Sciences Unit, NOVA University Lisbon (UCIBIO-NOVA), from chemistry to microbiology, immunology and biomedicine. To achieve excellence, UCIBIO NOVA needs further synergies, to be acquired through networking with top-class partners: IMPERIAL, LUMC and CICbioGUNE. GLYCOTwinning will i) Promote scientific excellence and innovation in Glycoscience; ii) Empower researchers’ capacity and creativity; iii) Strengthen research management and administration skills; iv) Raise dissemination activities; v) Boost reputation, research profile and attractiveness. GLYCOTwinning brings synergy and multidisciplinarity in cutting-edge scientific methodologies: glycan microarrays, advanced electrophoresis, high-resolution mass spectrometry and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, to decode sugar recognition by glycan binding proteins involved in disease. Through GLYCOTwinning, UCIBIO-NOVA will reinforce its research capacity, expanding its current R&D+I profile to dissect glycan-protein interactions, from the atomic and molecular levels to the cellular context, boosting the development of innovative glycan-based tools, diagnosis, and therapies. Furthermore, GLYCOTwinning will integrate its objectives in a project that explores glycan-protein interactions of the human microbiome in colorectal cancer, validating a GLYCOTwinning ToolBox, creating new knowledge, innovation and opening new research avenues for the widest dissemination and exploitation, with long term scientific and societal impact.