Role of Lectins in Viral Infections and Antiviral Intervention

A special issue of Viruses (ISSN 1999-4915). This special issue belongs to the section "Viral Immunology, Vaccines, and Antivirals".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2024 | Viewed by 73

Special Issue Editor


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Food Science and Nutrition, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
Interests: lectin-glycan interaction; pathogen recognition; cell signalling; antigen specific immunoregulation; viral infection, allergy and autoimmune diseases; nanoglycobiology

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Lectins are glycan-binding proteins which play a variety of important roles in biology, including mediating specific biorecogniton and cell–cell communication and modulating signal transduction. The recognition of viral surface-specific glycans by some immune cell lectins often leads to immune activation, but such binding can also be exploited by some viruses to establish their attachment to the host cell to facilitate infection. Binding can also generate signals to modulate immune responses for viral immune evasion.

In general, glycans exhibit low intrinsic immunogenicity and often play a protective role in viruses by shielding their peptide epitopes from antibody recognition; in some cases, they also enhance virus binding to their receptors. Hence, viral glycosylation sites are mostly conserved across different variants, making them a highly attractive target for developing broad-spectrum, long-lasting antivirals. 

In this Special Issue, we will collect both original and review articles concerning topics such as how lectin–glycan interactions enhance viral infectivity and how to target specific lectin–glycan interactions for the development of new antiviral and immunotherapeutical strategies.

Dr. Yuan Guo
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Viruses is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • lectin–glycan interaction
  • membrane fusion
  • immune evasion
  • multivalency
  • glycan conjugates
  • lectin constructs
  • antivirals

Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission.
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