Professor Beer's Journal Club

A recent article published in @Cell Reports Physical Science describes a glycoengineering strategy for improving targeted delivery to Langerhans cells, key immune sentinels in the skin. The researchers discovered that a previously developed glycomimetic ligand selectively bound human langerin but failed to recognize the murine receptor due to a steric clash within the binding site. By switching the ligand from the β-anomer to the α-anomer, they restored binding to murine langerin while maintaining strong affinity for the human receptor, enabling effective cross-species targeting. When incorporated into liposomes and mRNA-loaded nanoparticles, the optimized ligand enhanced uptake by Langerhans cells and improved antigen presentation and mRNA translation in both mouse and human ex vivo models, providing a valuable platform for translational vaccine and immunotherapy research. The NanoPhotometer® NP80 was used to quantify liposome concentrations by measuring the absorbance of incorporated AF647-labeled lipids and applying Beer-Lambert calculations to determine total nanoparticle concentration during formulation characterization.