About Glycosyn

Glycosyn LLC is a biotechnology company developing products, based on molecules found naturally in human milk that offer broad health benefits through promoting the establishment and maintenance of a healthy gut microbial ecology.

Glycosyn and partners are studying how these molecules can be used in normal healthy nutrition, and also how they can be employed to combat a wide range of childhood and adult diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD: Crohn’s/ulcerative colitis), necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and other inflammatory and infectious conditions such as infectious diarrhea and childhood respiratory diseases.

Founded in 2002, Glycosyn was formed to commercialize discoveries that arose during three decades of pioneering academic research by its three scientific founders, David Newburg, PhD, Boston College; Ardythe Morrow, PhD, Cincinnati Children’s Research Foundation; and Guillermo Ruiz-Palacios, MD, Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Medicas y Nutricion–Mexico. They discovered natural, anti-infective components (glycans) in human breast milk and demonstrated that these components provide significant protection against infectious diarrhea. In 2007 Glycosyn hired John McCoy, PhD, a senior industry professional with over 30 years’ experience in biotechnology and biopharmaceuticals, as Chief Scientific Officer and established laboratory facilities in Massachusetts, USA. Dr. McCoy and his team has since successfully developed economic, scalable technology for the large scale production of Glycosyn’s principal products; the human milk oligosaccharides (hMOS), and has developed intellectual property to protect these innovations.

Human milk contains thousands of bioactive glycan structures with specific functions that promote health. Individual human milk glycans have been found to be anti-infective, anti-inflammatory, and/or to promote mucosal development and immunity. Over the past three decades, research sponsored by the National Institutes of Health conducted by Glycosyn’s founding scientists has identified specific glycans unique to human milk that have translational potential as novel agents to promote healthy development and to reduce risk of infections and both inflammatory and metabolic diseases. Glycosyn has licensed intellectual property covering many of these uses of human milk oligosaccharides.