Polysaccharides: Chemical Compound

Dear Colleagues,

Natural polysaccharides, being safe and bioactive, show great potential to be medications, and are attracting increasing interests from scientists and industries.

However, there are some concerns stalling the research and development of natural bioactive polysaccharides. 1) The reproducibility of the methods used for quality analysis is poor so that there are so many so-called “new” structures found in the same species; 2) NMR signals of these polymers are often severely overlapped and are not reliable as expected; 3) it is hard to identify individual polysaccharides of different herb components in a formula products; and 4)  little is known about how the polysaccharides work in body via oral dosing.

Recently, significant advances are achieved by scientists, including new methods for synthesis of polysaccharides,  oligomer-based quick identification, and more knowledge of the role of gut microbiota in the metabolism and mechanism of polysaccharides’ bioactivities. This issue invites any inspiring, critical, and new ideas and research findings to address the above challenging topics. Submissions addressing quality analysis methodology, challenges and difficulties in structure characterization, bioactivity evaluation, and molecular mechanism, are encouraged.

Dr. Quan-Bin Han
Dr. Lifeng Li
Guest Editors

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