Many people instinctively associate mucus with disgusting things, but in fact, it has many valuable functions for our health. It tracks our important intestinal flora and feeds bacteria. It covers all the internal surfaces of our body and acts as a barrier from the outside world. It helps us protect ourselves from infectious diseases.

This is because the mucus acts as a filter to allow bacteria to enter or exit, and the bacteria feed on the sugar in the mucus between meals. Therefore, if we can use the correct sugar to produce mucus that is already in the body, it may be used in brand new medical treatments.

Now, researchers from the DNRF Center of Excellence and the Copenhagen Glycomics Center have discovered how to artificially produce healthy mucus.

We have developed a method to generate important information found in human mucus, also called mucins, and their important carbohydrates. Now, we show that it can be artificially produced like other therapeutic biological agents (such as antibodies and other biological drugs) are produced today, said the lead author of the study and the director of the Copenhagen Center Professor Henrik Clausen. Glycomics.

Mucus or mucin is mainly composed of sugar. In this study, the researchers showed that what the bacteria actually recognize is a special sugar pattern on mucin.