Chemical and chemoenzymatic syntheses of carbohydrates for therapeutic evalutions and immunological studies

如今，很难遇到一个生活在加拿大的人，他没有因为癌症失去亲人。在上个世纪，癌症曾经是一种罕见的疾病，但它已经迅速演变，成为仅次于心脏病的第二大常见死亡原因。在加拿大，癌症现在导致27%的男性和23%的女性死亡，统计数据预测，今天的加拿大人口患癌症的风险要高得多；每2.4名男性中就有一人患上癌症，而每2.7名女性中就有一人患上癌症。碳水化合物在帮助我们了解癌症和传染病的起源、发展和增殖方面起着关键作用，因为它们是在各种细胞间通讯和信号转导中发挥核心作用的主要介质分子。研究蛋白质-碳水化合物、碳水化合物-碳水化合物的相互作用可以使我们能够设计和合成有效的治疗药物，这些药物可以针对这些疾病依赖的关键途径。

It is hard nowadays to meet someone living in Canada who has not lost someone close to them from cancer. During last century, once a rare disease, cancer has quickly evolved and become the second most common cause of mortality, next to heart disease. Cancer now kills 27% of men and 23% of women in Canada, and statistics has predicted a much higher risk to acquire cancer for today's Canadian population; one in every 2.4 males versus one in every 2.7 females will develop cancer in their lifetime. Carbohydrates hold the key in helping us understanding the origin, development and proliferation of cancer as well as infectious disease as they are primary mediator molecules playing central roles in all sorts of cell-cell communication and signal transduction. Studying protein-carbohydrate, carbohydrate-carbohydrate interactions can enable us to design and synthesize effective therapeutics that can target the crucial pathways these diseases rely on.