Multivalent Ligands for Siglecs

Siglecs have emerged as an important family of immunomodulatory glycan-binding proteins that can bind sialoside ligands both on the same cell surface, in cis, and on other cells, in trans. Expression of siglecs varies among a variety of immune cells, and tools to probe siglecs on these cells are crucial to understanding their function. In designing synthetic ligands, competition by cis ligands requires the use of multivalency to achieve sufficient avidity to stably bind siglecs on native cells. This chapter describes the use of multivalent ligands to probe cell surfaces, as well as to investigate ligand binding to recombinant siglecs.