Replacement of the L-iduronic acid unit of the anticoagulant pentasaccharide idraparinux by a 6-deoxy-L-talopyranose - Synthesis and conformational analysis

Overview of the current procedures in synthesis of heparin saccharides

Natural heparin, a glycosaminoglycan consisting of repeating hexuronic acid and glucosamine linked by 1 → 4 glycosidic bonds, is the most widely used anticoagulant. To subvert the dependence on animal sourced heparin, alternative methods to produce heparin saccharides, i.e., either heterogenous sugar chains similar to natural heparin, or structurally defined oligosaccharides, are becoming hot subjects. Although the success by chemical synthesis of the pentasaccharide, fondaparinux, encourages to proceed through a chemical approach generating homogenous product, synthesizing larger oligos is still cumbersome and beyond reach so far. Alternatively, the chemoenzymatic pathway exhibited exquisite stereoselectivity of glycosylation and regioselectivity of modification, with the advantage to skip the tedious protection steps unavoidable in chemical synthesis. However, to a scale of drug production needed today is still not in sight. In comparison, a procedure of de novo biosynthesis in an organism could be an ultimate goal. The main purpose of this review is to summarize the current available/developing strategies and techniques, which is expected to provide a comprehensive picture for production of heparin saccharides to replenish or eventually to replace the animal derived products. In chemical and chemoenzymatic approaches, the methodologies are discussed according to the synthesis procedures: building block preparation, chain elongation, and backbone modification.

Pharmacology of Heparin and Related Drugs: An Update

Heparin has been used extensively as an antithrombotic and anticoagulant for close to 100 years. This anticoagulant activity is attributed mainly to the pentasaccharide sequence, which potentiates the inhibitory action of antithrombin, a major inhibitor of the coagulation cascade. More recently it has been elucidated that heparin exhibits anti-inflammatory effect via interference of the formation of neutrophil extracellular traps and this may also contribute to heparin's antithrombotic activity. This illustrates that heparin interacts with a broad range of biomolecules, exerting both anticoagulant and nonanticoagulant actions. Since our previous review, there has been an increased interest in these nonanticoagulant effects of heparin, with the beneficial role in patients infected with SARS2-coronavirus a highly topical example. This article provides an update on our previous review with more recent developments and observations made for these novel uses of heparin and an overview of the development status of heparin-based drugs. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: This state-of-the-art review covers recent developments in the use of heparin and heparin-like materials as anticoagulant, now including immunothrombosis observations, and as nonanticoagulant including a role in the treatment of SARS-coronavirus and inflammatory conditions.

Synthesis of a Heparinoid Pentasaccharide Containing l-Guluronic Acid Instead of l-Iduronic Acid with Preserved Anticoagulant Activity

l-Iduronic acid is a key constituent of heparin and heparan sulfate polysaccharides due to its unique conformational plasticity, which facilitates the binding of polysaccharides to proteins. At the same time, this is the synthetically most challenging unit of heparinoid oligosaccharides; therefore, there is a high demand for its replacement with a more easily accessible sugar unit. In the case of idraparinux, an excellent anticoagulant heparinoid pentasaccharide, we demonstrated that l-iduronic acid can be replaced by an easier-to-produce l-sugar while maintaining its essential biological activity. From the inexpensive d-mannose, through a highly functionalized phenylthio mannoside, the l-gulose donor was prepared by C-5 epimerization in 10 steps with excellent yield. This unit was incorporated into the pentasaccharide by α-selective glycosylation and oxidized to l-guluronic acid. The complete synthesis required only 36 steps, with 21 steps for the longest linear route. The guluronate containing pentasaccharide inhibited coagulation factor Xa by 50% relative to the parent compound, representing an excellent anticoagulant activity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first biologically active heparinoid anticoagulant which contains a different sugar unit instead of l-iduronic acid.

Conformational Analysis of Heparin-Analogue Pentasaccharides by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and Molecular Dynamics Simulations

Elucidation and improvement of the blood coagulant properties of heparin are the focus of intense research. In this study, we performed conformational analysis using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations on the heparin pentasaccharide analogue idraparinux, its disulfonatomethyl analogue, which features a slightly improved blood coagulation property, and a trisulfonatomethyl analogue, in which the activity has been totally abolished. As the ring conformation of the G subunit has been suggested as a major determinant of the biological properties, we analyzed the sugar ring conformations and dynamics of the interglycosidic linkages. We found that the conformation of the G ring is dominated by the ²S_O skewed boat next to the ¹C₄ chair in all three derivatives. Both the thermodynamics and the kinetics of the conformational states were found to be highly similar in the three derivatives. Molecular kinetic analysis showed that the ²S_O skewed boat state of the G ring is equally favorable in the three analogues, resulting in similar ²S_O populations. Also, the transition kinetics from the ¹C₄ chair to the ²S_O skewed boat was found to be comparable in the derivatives, which indicates a similar energy barrier between the two states of the G subunit. We also identified a slower conformational transition between the dominant ⁴C₁ chair and the boat conformations on the E subunit. Both G and E ring flips are also accompanied by changes along the interglycosidic linkages, which take place highly synchronously with the ring flips. These findings indicate that conformational plasticity of the G ring and the dominance of the ²S_O skewed boat populations do not necessarily warrant the biological activity of the derivatives and hence the impact of other factors also needs to be considered.

Objective function estimation for solving optimization problems in gate-model quantum computers

Quantum computers provide a valuable resource to solve computational problems. The maximization of the objective function of a computational problem is a crucial problem in gate-model quantum computers. The objective function estimation is a high-cost procedure that requires several rounds of quantum computations and measurements. Here, we define a method for objective function estimation of arbitrary computational problems in gate-model quantum computers. The proposed solution significantly reduces the costs of the objective function estimation and provides an optimized estimate of the state of the quantum computer for solving optimization problems.

An Efficient Modular One-Pot Synthesis of Heparin-Based Anticoagulant Idraparinux

Idraparinux is a fully O-sulfated α-methyl glycoside of heparin pentasaccharide motif known to interact with the antithrombin III domain and act as anticoagulant. The current most effective synthesis of Idraparinux is complicated and nonstereoselective, requiring numerous stepwise procedures with low yields. We report here an efficient modular one-pot synthesis of Idraparinux involving the use of a glycosyl phosphate with 6- O- tert-butyl diphenyl silyl group and a d-glucuronic acid-containing disaccharide thioglycoside with 6- O-acetyl group as donor building blocks for the α-directing one-pot glycosylations with an l-iduronic acid-containing disaccharide acceptor building block. The uronic acid was incorporated in a disaccharide module used in the one-pot synthesis to avoid the complicated late-stage installation of these acidic sugars. The one-pot synthesis of Idraparinux demonstrated here is an effective strategy and should be applicable to the modular assembly of other heparan sulfates with regiodefined sulfation pattern for functional study.