Special Issue: Glycomics and Personalized Glycomedicine

Glycomics is one of the latest omics fields emerging in the current postgenomics era. This new specialty in system sciences has much to offer to diagnostics and therapeutics innovation communities in medicine and life sciences, not to mention hope for patients, and people with subclinical and/or suboptimal health conditions through a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of common complex diseases.

Although the past several decades of genomics research have made important strides, a large portion of intra- and interindividual and between-population variability in susceptibility to human diseases and response to medicines remains poorly explained. Glycomics examines post-translational mechanisms such as glycosylation that occurs in abundance and in a myriad of diverse and complex forms. In mammalians, more than half of all cellular proteins undergo such modification. Glycosylation affects the structure, function, folding, trafficking, stability, half-life, and solubility of proteins, among other molecules.

In contrast to proteins whose synthesis follows transcription and translation of genes, the post-translational covalent attachment of sugar moieties (glycans) to proteins occurs without a template by a host of enzymes that add or subtract monosaccharide units to proteins. The battery of enzymes that glycosylation depends on are encoded by glycogenes. Variations in the latter genes as well as glycosylation itself can explain some of the hitherto unknown molecular mechanisms related to diseases and variability in drug and other health intervention outcomes.

As such, glycomics is poised to bring about new insights into dynamic host–environment interactions or the combined effects of both nature and nurture that ultimately underlie the basis of most complex phenotypes. Preventive, predictive, and personalized glycomedicine is an allied new discipline that employs glycomics biomarkers in the hopes of better targeting of disease diagnostics as well as drug discovery, prescription choice, and dosing based on individual glycomics profile.

We are excited to present the December special issue of OMICS on cutting edge advances in glycomics and personalized glycomedicine. This is truly a unique and timely special issue that offers a flavor of what is currently accomplished in the field and what we might anticipate in the coming decade. Li et al., Liu et al., Wang et al., and Hou et al. present respective examples of glycomics research as applied to type 2 diabetes mellitus, cardiometabolic health, and hyperuricemia, and draw from diverse world populations and use community-based study designs in particular. Conceptual analysis of the ways in which glycomics and other omics fields can be integrated as multiomics science is presented by Tanja Kunej, whereas Wei Wang offers the state-of-the-art advances being made by the Human Glycome Project. Collet Dandara, a pioneer of multiomics science and health innovation in Africa, offers his insights from the broader field of multiomics science. Liu et al. present a systematic review of the immunoglobulin G N-glycans as next-generation diagnostic biomarkers for common chronic diseases, whereas Russell et al. examine the design of biomarker–phenotype association studies in complex diseases with glycomics biomarkers. Vural Özdemir presents three critically informed new conceptual frames for innovation in governance for planetary health and emerging life science technologies such as glycomics.

We trust you will enjoy reading the special issue on glycomics and personalized glycomedicine as much as we have enjoyed editing it. As always, we welcome your state-of-the-art articles in the field of glycomics, glycobiology, and multiomics system sciences.

Disclaimer

The views expressed reflect the personal opinions of the authors only.