Multiple alignments of strings have been extensively studied as an effective tool to study string-type data such as DNA. In this paper, we generalize the notion of multiple alignments of strings and introduce -alignments. -alignments of components. Such objects can be strings, ordered and unordered trees, rooted and unrooted trees, directed and undirected graphs, partially ordered sets and so on. On the other hand, when we introduce costs of -alignments, the problem to find optimal -alignments that minimize their costs proves to be NP-hard. To solve known approximation algorithm for optimal multiple alignments of strings, can be generalized to -alignments. When we applied the generalized center star structural patterns of glycans that characterize the disease of leukemia.