Glycans (carbohydrates or sugar chains) cover the surfaces of all cells through a process called glycosylation. The diversity of glycans presentation on cell surface (the glycome) is enormous which put glycans as ideal molecular sensors with a vast potential for information display. The importance of glycans in the regulation of the immune system has been underappreciated for many years. The elucidation of how glycans integrate the regulatory circuits that control the immune response will have a broad biological and clinical impact in major diseases such as chronic inflammation, autoimmunity and cancer.

Our group works at the interface of immunology, cancer and glycobiology, using a combination of in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo (animal models) approaches that together with the use of human clinical samples, aims to understand how glycans mediate the cellular processes relevant to immune tolerance, inflammation and cancer. For more than 15 years we have investigated the role of glycans in mediating cellular processes central to immune regulation and human diseases. The group has a multidisciplinary background being composed of highly motivated biochemists, biologists, and clinical investigators that in straight collaboration with national and international hospitals share the common long-term goal of performing translational research as well as preclinical and clinical validation of rational biomarkers and therapeutic strategies in inflammation, autoimmunity and cancer. We are mainly focused on the study of glycans as key mediators of the cellular and molecular processes relevant to immune tolerance, inflammation and cancer.

Our long-term goal is to disentangle the spatiotemporal regulation of glycans in health and disease and to decipher its biological information to better understand its impact in defining the magnitude, the nature and the fate of the immune responses associated with inflammation, autoimmunity and cancer envisioning novel prognostic, diagnostic, and therapeutic strategies.