Glycan Masking is a technique used in structure-based reverse vaccinology to focus the response of the immune system towards specific epitopes of interest. Glycans (red) are added to the surface of potential vaccine candidates (green) to hide epitopes that elicit poorly performing antibodies (orange). On the other end, epitopes that have been proven to elicit a strong answer (e.g potent neutralizing, protective or broad antibodies) will be fully exposed to antibody binding (blue). To perform glycan masking we use the Carbohydrate framework within the Rosetta Suite for protein modeling and design.
Glycan Masking