One-pot nucleophilic substitution-double click reactions of biazides leading to functionalized bis(1,2,3-triazole) derivatives

The nucleophilic substitution of benzylic bromides with sodium azide was combined with a subsequent copper-catalyzed (3 + 2) cycloaddition with terminal alkynes. This one-pot process was developed with a simple model alkyne, but then applied to more complex alkynes bearing enantiopure 1,2-oxazinyl substituents. Hence, the precursor compounds 1,2-, 1,3- or 1,4-bis(bromomethyl)benzene furnished geometrically differing bis(1,2,3-triazole) derivatives. The use of tris[(1-benzyl-1H-1,2,3-triazol-4-yl)methyl]amine (TBTA) as ligand for the click step turned out to be very advantageous. The compounds with 1,2-oxazinyl end groups can potentially serve as precursors of divalent carbohydrate mimetics, but the reductive cleavage of the 1,2-oxazine rings to aminopyran moieties did not proceed cleanly with these compounds.

Carbohydrate-Based Macromolecular Biomaterials

Carbohydrates are the most abundant and one of the most important biomacromolecules in Nature. Except for energy-related compounds, carbohydrates can be roughly divided into two categories: Carbohydrates as matter and carbohydrates as information. As matter, carbohydrates are abundantly present in the extracellular matrix of animals and cell walls of various plants, bacteria, fungi, etc., serving as scaffolds. Some commonly found polysaccharides are featured as biocompatible materials with controllable rigidity and functionality, forming polymeric biomaterials which are widely used in drug delivery, tissue engineering, etc. As information, carbohydrates are usually referred to the glycans from glycoproteins, glycolipids, and proteoglycans, which bind to proteins or other carbohydrates, thereby meditating the cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions. These glycans could be simplified as synthetic glycopolymers, glycolipids, and glycoproteins, which could be afforded through polymerization, multistep synthesis, or a semisynthetic strategy. The information role of carbohydrates can be demonstrated not only as targeting reagents but also as immune antigens and adjuvants. The latter are also included in this review as they are always in a macromolecular formulation. In this review, we intend to provide a relatively comprehensive summary of carbohydrate-based macromolecular biomaterials since 2010 while emphasizing the fundamental understanding to guide the rational design of biomaterials. Carbohydrate-based macromolecules on the basis of their resources and chemical structures will be discussed, including naturally occurring polysaccharides, naturally derived synthetic polysaccharides, glycopolymers/glycodendrimers, supramolecular glycopolymers, and synthetic glycolipids/glycoproteins. Multiscale structure-function relationships in several major application areas, including delivery systems, tissue engineering, and immunology, will be detailed. We hope this review will provide valuable information for the development of carbohydrate-based macromolecular biomaterials and build a bridge between the carbohydrates as matter and the carbohydrates as information to promote new biomaterial design in the near future.

Glyco-gold nanoparticles: synthesis and applications

Glyco-gold nanoparticles combine in a single entity the peculiar properties of gold nanoparticles with the biological activity of carbohydrates. The result is an exciting nanosystem, able to mimic the natural multivalent presentation of saccharide moieties and to exploit the peculiar optical properties of the metallic core. In this review, we present recent advances on glyco-gold nanoparticle applications in different biological fields, highlighting the key parameters which inspire the glyco nanoparticle design.

Iodination of carbohydrate-derived 1,2-oxazines to enantiopure 5-iodo-3,6-dihydro-2H-1,2-oxazines and subsequent palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions

Iodination of carbohydrate-derived 3,6-dihydro-2H-1,2-oxazines of type 3 using iodine and pyridine in DMF furnished 5-iodo-substituted 1,2-oxazine derivatives 4 with high efficacy. The alkenyl iodide moiety of 1,2-oxazine derivatives syn-4 and anti-4 was subsequently exploited for the introduction of new functionalities at the C-5 position by applying palladium-catalyzed carbon–carbon bond-forming reactions such as Sonogashira, Heck, or Suzuki coupling reactions as well as a cyanation reaction. These cross-coupling reactions led to a series of 5-alkynyl-, 5-alkenyl-, 5-aryl- and 5-cyano-substituted 1,2-oxazine derivatives being of considerable interest for further synthetic elaborations. This was exemplarily demonstrated by the hydrogenation of syn-21 and anti-24 and by a click reaction of a 5-alkynyl-substituted precursor.

Glycomaterials for immunomodulation, immunotherapy, and infection prophylaxis

Synthetic carbohydrate-modified materials that can engage the innate and adaptive immune systems are receiving increasing interest to confer protection against onset of future disease, such as pathogen infection, as well as to treat established diseases, such as autoimmunity and cancer.

Effects of multivalent histamine supported on gold nanoparticles: activation of histamine receptors by derivatized histamine at subnanomolar concentrations

Colloidal gold nanoparticles with a functionalized ligand shell were synthesized and used as new histamine receptor agonists. Mercaptoundecanoic acid moieties were attached to the surface of the nanoparticles and derivatized with native histamine. The multivalent presentation of the immobilized ligands carried by the gold nanoparticles resulted in extremely low activation concentrations for histamine receptors on rat colonic epithelium. As a functional read-out system, chloride secretion resulting from stimulation of neuronal and epithelial histamine H1 and H2 receptors was measured in Ussing chamber experiments. These responses were strictly attributed to the histamine entities as histamine-free particles Au-MUDOLS or the monovalent ligand AcS-MUDA-HA proved to be ineffective. The vitality of the tissues used was not impaired by the nanoparticles.

Synthesis of tumor-associated MUC1-glycopeptides and their multivalent presentation by functionalized gold colloids

The mucin MUC1 is a glycoprotein involved in fundamental biological processes, which can be found over-expressed and with a distinctly altered glycan pattern on epithelial tumor cells; thus it is a promising target structure in the quest for effective carbohydrate-based cancer vaccines and immunotherapeutics. Natural glycopeptide antigens indicate only a low immunogenicity and a T-cell independent immune response; however, this major drawback can be overcome by coupling of glycopeptide antigens multivalently to immunostimulating carrier platforms. In particular, gold nanoparticles are well suited as templates for the multivalent presentation of glycopeptide antigens, due to their remarkably high surface-to-volume ratio in combination with their high biostability. In this work the synthesis of novel MUC1-glycopeptide antigens and their coupling to gold nanoparticles of different sizes are presented. In addition, the development of a new dot-blot immunoassay to test the potential antigen-antibody binding is introduced.

Synthesis of multivalent carbohydrate mimetics with aminopolyol end groups and their evaluation as L-selectin inhibitors

In this article a series of divalent and trivalent carbohydrate mimetics on the basis of an enantiopure aminopyran and of serinol is described. These aminopolyols are connected by amide bonds to carboxylic acid derived spacer units either by Schotten-Baumann acylation or by coupling employing HATU as reagent. The O-sulfation employing the SO3·DMF complex was optimized. It was crucial to follow this process by 700 MHz (1)H NMR spectroscopy to ensure full conversion and to use a refined neutralization and purification protocol. Many of the compounds could not be tested as L-selectin inhibitor by SPR due to their insolubility in water, nevertheless, a divalent and a trivalent amide showed surprisingly good activities with IC50 values in the low micromolar range.

Synthesis of rigid p-terphenyl-linked carbohydrate mimetics

An approach to β-D-2-aminotalose- and β-D-2-aminoidose-configured carbohydrate mimetics bearing a phenyl substituent is described. Unnatural divalent rigid p-terphenyl-linked C-aryl glycosides with 2.0 nm dimension are available using Suzuki cross-couplings. The key compound, a p-bromophenyl-substituted 1,2-oxazine, was prepared by a stereoselective [3 + 3]-cyclization of a D-isoascorbic acid-derived (Z)-nitrone and lithiated TMSE-allene. The Lewis acid-induced rearrangement of this heterocycle provided the corresponding bicyclic 1,2-oxazine derivative that may be regarded as internally protected amino sugar analogue. After subsequent reduction of the carbonyl group, the resulting bicyclic compound was used for Suzuki cross-couplings to form biphenyl aminopyran or p-terphenyl-linked dimers. Hydrogenolysis afforded new unnatural aminosugar mimetics. Zinc in the presence of acid or samarium diiodide were examined for the N-O bond cleavage in order to obtain the rigid p-terphenyl-linked C-glycosyl dimers.

Synthesis of new enantiopure poly(hydroxy)aminooxepanes as building blocks for multivalent carbohydrate mimetics

New compounds with carbohydrate-similar structure (carbohydrate mimetics) are presented in this article. Starting from enantiopure nitrones and lithiated TMSE-allene we prepared three 1,2-oxazine derivatives which underwent a highly stereoselective Lewis acid-induced rearrangement to give bicyclic products in good yield. Subsequent reductive transformations delivered a library of new poly(hydroxy)aminooxepane derivatives. The crucial final palladium-catalyzed hydrogenolysis of the 1,2-oxazine moiety was optimized resulting in a reasonably efficient approach to a series of new seven-membered carbohydrate mimetics.

Understanding selectin counter-receptor binding from electrostatic energy computations and experimental binding studies

Higher organisms defend themselves against invading micro-organisms and harmful substances with their immune system. Key players of the immune system are the white blood cells (WBC), which in case of infection move in an extravasation process from blood vessels toward infected tissue promoting inflammation. This process starts with the attachment of the WBC to the blood vessel wall, mediated by protein pair interactions of selectins and counter-receptors (C-R). Individual selectin C-R binding is weak and varies only moderately between the three selectin types. Multivalency enhances such small differences, rendering selectin-binding type specific. In this work, we study selectin C-R binding, the initial step of extravasation. We performed electrostatic energy computations based on the crystal structure of one selectin type co-crystallized with the ligating part of the C-R. The agreement with measured free energies of binding is satisfactory. Additionally, we modeled selectin mutant structures in order to explain differences in binding of the different selectin types. To verify our modeling procedures, surface plasmon resonance data were measured for several mutants and compared with computed binding affinities. Binding affinities computed with soaked rather than co-crystallized selectin C-R structures do not agree with measured data. Hence, these structures are inappropriate to describe the binding mode. The analysis of selectin/C-R binding unravels the role played by individual molecular components in the binding event. This opens new avenues to prevent immune system malfunction, designing drugs that can control inflammatory processes by moderating selectin C-R binding.

Glyconanoparticles as multifunctional and multimodal carbohydrate systems

The quest for the construction of multivalent carbohydrate systems, with precise geometries that are highly efficient in interacting with carbohydrate binding proteins, has been a goal of synthetic chemists since the discovery of the multivalent nature of carbohydrate-mediated interactions. However, the control of the spatial and topological requirements for these systems is still a challenge. Glyconanoparticles (GNPs) are sugar-coated gold, iron oxide or semiconductor nanoparticles with defined thiol-ending glycosides that combine the multivalent presentation of carbohydrates (glycoclusters) with the special chemico-physical properties of the nano-sized metallic core. The possibility of attaching different types of carbohydrates and other molecules (such as luminescent probes, peptides, and magnetic chelates) onto the same gold nanoparticle in a controlled way (multifunctional GNPs), as well as modifying the core in order to obtain glyconanoparticles with magnetic or fluorescence properties (multimodal GNPs) makes this multivalent glyco-scaffold suitable for carrying out studies on carbohydrate-mediated interactions and applications in molecular imaging. In this review, we focus mainly on the rational design of glyconanoparticles as scaffolds for combining different ligands and survey the most recent examples of glyconanoparticles as both multivalent carbohydrate systems and probes for molecular imaging.