Glycan arrays as tools for infectious disease research

•Examining pathogen lectins for binding specificity and selective inhibition.•Understanding host defense: fine specificity study of innate immune receptors.•Anti-glycan antibody analysis to establish carbohydrates as vaccine candidates.•Serum biomarker screening for infectious disease diagnosis.

Infectious diseases cause millions of deaths worldwide each year and are a major burden for economies, especially in underdeveloped countries. Glycans and their interactions with other biomolecules are involved in all major steps of infection. Glycan arrays enable the rapid and sensitive detection of those interactions and are among the most powerful techniques to study the molecular biology of infectious diseases. This review will focus on recent developments and discuss the applications of glycan arrays to the elucidation of host–pathogen and pathogen–pathogen interactions, the development of tools for infection diagnosis and the use of glycan arrays in modern vaccine design.