Post by Melis Özkan

A big chunk of my PhD work is now out in JACS. ✨ #Glycotime I’m proud to share the outcome of this focused effort, which grew out of work bridging carbohydrate chemistry, biophysics, and neurobiology. Here, we introduce a modular synthetic strategy for small molecule heparin glycomimetics that allows precise control over sulfation patterns and recreates heparin-mediated neurotrophic signaling without anticoagulant activity. These glycomimetics selectively bind and stabilize neurotrophins, supporting neuronal growth in several cellular models and synaptic activity in rat hippocampal neurons, pointing toward their potential in neural repair and regeneration. It has been a long journey for me to take this project from its initial conception to a full paper. Shaping it into its final form has been deeply rewarding and was made possible by the valuable contributions of collaborators who joined along the way. My sincere thanks to @Giada Cellot for the primary neuron experiments; Sujeet Pawar for all his intellectual guidance on sugar syntheses and for bringing rigor to the synthetic design; Deepika Sardana for molecular modeling; Ivana Barravecchia and Debora Angeloni for neuronal assays; and @Laura Ballerini for her expertise in primary neuron studies. I’m especially thankful to my PhD advisors, Silvestro Micera and Francesco Stellacci, for their support and supervision. 📄 Full paper (open access provided by EPFL): https://lnkd.in/dFFqnChw