Carbohydrate based vaccines

Vaccination is the most cost-efficient and the most powerful medical intervention in the control, prevention and eradication of many diseases that affect human population. Capsular polysaccharide based vaccines have been in use for many decades providing immunity against various bacterial infections. The advent of new efficient and sensitive analytical and synthetic methods in carbohydrate chemistry, together with our increased understanding of glycobiology and glycoimmunology, makes the development of carbohydrate based vaccines against various cancers possible. This review article describes the biological basis of vaccination and summarizes the recent progress in the development of carbohydrate based glycoconjugate vaccines with particular emphasis on structure, function and chemistry of glycoconjugates.