Despite the recognition of the major importance of carbohydrates among all the natural disciplines, our present knowledge on their roles in modulating different processes of life is still limited. This is particularly true for the understanding of how carbohydrates trigger immunological functions.
Typing “carbohydrate AND immunology” as a query on ISI Web of Knowledge lead to 2623 publications (from 1950-1984). From a careful examination of the content of these publications (including also three seminal glyco-papers from 1930-1940), major “old” and “hidden” results were selected as useful pioneering works. Most of these papers are cited around 100 times but they show interesting and fascinating input for glycoscientists. Their presentation of these landmarks follows a chronological order, with the ambition to retrace the conceptual evolution of a scientific discipline as well as to trigger some new points of view on modern Glycoscience.
