# Transitioning GLYCAM-Web to a self-sustaining carbohydrate modeling service

> **NIH NIH R24** · UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA · 2020 · $528,500

## Abstract

Project Summary
For over a decade, GLYCAM-Web (www.glycam.org) has provided the scientific community with a suite of
online tools for simplifying the modeling of 3D structures of carbohydrates, glycoproteins, and their interactions
with proteins. The highly plastic nature of oligosaccharides and the fact that they are typically branched means
that they place unique demands on both software developers and users. This is exacerbated by their complex
and archaic nomenclature. GLYCAM-web was developed by a team of people with a unique depth of
expertise in carbohydrate chemistry and informatics, with the overarching goal of making carbohydrate
modeling more accessible to scientists who either lack computational expertise, or whose familiarity with
carbohydrates is limited.
According to AWstats and in-house code GLYCAM-Web was visited by ~110,000 unique addresses and had
~11,000 PDB file downloads from 2016 to 2019. The downloads are usually associated with creating and
viewing 3D structures of glycans and for offline modeling. We have included a detailed usage analysis in the
Research Strategy to emphasize the significance of this resource to the NIGMS research community.
The development of GLYCAM-Web has been primarily supported through an NIH NIGMS P41 grant held at the
Complex Carbohydrate Research Center at the University of Georgia that has been continuously renewed
since the 1990s. With the ending of the P41 program, we are not eligible for further support within the P41
program, and are seeking support that with enable us to transition GLYCAM-Web to a near self-sustaining
resource whose operation costs are offset by new fee-for-service functionality targeting users who wish to
perform molecular dynamics simulations, but who lack the expertise or infrastructure to do so. The decade-
long development of GLYCAM-Web has seen the infrastructure grow and change with the advent of new
architectures, code evolution, and increased security requirements, leading to a complex code base involving
the C++, JAVA, and PYTHON languages. Thus a significant aspect of this proposal involves code refactoring
to unify the code base, which will directly reduce maintenance costs. To achieve near self-sustainability, we
have developed the four aims what will address the necessary improvements to code and infrastructure:
usability, transferability, maintainability, and sustainability.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9956412
- **Project number:** 1R24GM136984-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
- **Principal Investigator:** ROBERT J WOODS
- **Activity code:** R24 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $528,500
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-05-01 → 2023-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9956412

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9956412, Transitioning GLYCAM-Web to a self-sustaining carbohydrate modeling service (1R24GM136984-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9956412. Licensed CC0.

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