Human Milk Oligosaccharides as Essential Tools for Basic and Application Studies on Galectins

It is now recognized that human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) can function both as prebiotics and as decoy receptors that inhibit the attachment of pathogenic microorganisms to the colonic mucosa. They can also act as immune modulators and as colonic maturation stimulators in breast-fed infants. These functions could be mediated by biological interaction between a variety of HMOs and lectins including galectins, selectins and siglecs. There are...