Elevated concentrations of Neu5Ac and Neu5,9Ac2 in human plasma: potential biomarkers of cardiovascular disease.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a group of health conditions affecting the heart and vascular system with very high prevalence and mortality rates. The presence of CVD is characterised by high levels of inflammation which have previously been associated with increased plasma concentrations of N-acetyl neuraminic acid (Neu5Ac). While Neu5Ac has been studied in the context of CVD, Neu5,9Ac2 has not, despite being the second most abundant sialic acid in human plasma. A small-scale pilot study of thirty plasma samples from patients with diagnosed CVD, and thirty age and sex-matched healthy controls, was designed to gain insight into sialic acids as biomarkers for CVD and potential future areas of study. Each sample was assayed for Neu5Ac and Neu5,9Ac2 concentrations. Mean Neu5Ac and Neu5,9Ac2 concentrations were significantly elevated in patients with CVD compared to healthy controls (Neu5Ac: P < 0.001; Neu5,9Ac2: P < 0.04). Receiver operator curve (ROC) analysis indicated that both Neu5Ac and Neu5,9Ac2 have reasonable predictive power for the presence of CVD (Neu5Ac AUC: 0.86; Neu5,9Ac2 AUC: 0.71). However, while Neu5Ac had both good sensitivity (0.82) and specificity (0.81), Neu5,9Ac2 had equivalent specificity (0.81) but very poor sensitivity (0.44). A combination marker of Neu5Ac + Neu5,9Ac2 showed improvement over Neu5Ac alone in terms of predictive power (AUC: 0.93), sensitivity (0.87), and specificity (0.90). Comparison to a known inflammatory marker, high sensitivity c-reactive protein (hs-CRP: P-value: NS, ROC:0.50) was carried out, showing that both Neu5Ac and Neu5,9Ac2 outperformed this marker. Further to this, hs-CRP values were combined with the three different sialic acid markers to determine any effect on the AUC values. A slight improvement in AUC was noted for each of the combinations, with Neu5Ac + Neu5,9Ac2 + hs-CRP giving the best AUC of 0.97 overall. Thus, Neu5Ac would appear to offer good potential as a predictive marker for the presence of CVD, which the addition of Neu5,9Ac2 predictive power improves, with further improvement seen by the addition of hs-CRP.

Quantitative Standards of 4-O-Acetyl- and 9-O-Acetyl-N-Acetylneuraminic Acid for the Analysis of Plasma and Serum.

N-Acetylneuraminic acid (sialic acid, Neu5Ac) is one of a large, diverse family of nine-carbon monosaccharides that play roles in many biological functions such as immune response. Neu5Ac has previously been identified as a potential biomarker for the presence and pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes and cancer. More recent research has highlighted acetylated sialic acid derivatives, specifically Neu5,9Ac2 , as biomarkers for oral and breast cancers, but advances in analysis have been hampered due to a lack of commercially available quantitative standards. We report here the synthesis of 9-O- and 4-O-acetylated sialic acids (Neu5,9Ac2 and Neu4,5Ac2 ) with optimisation of previously reported synthetic routes. Neu5,9Ac2 was synthesised in 1 step in 68 % yield. Neu4,5Ac2 was synthesised in 4 steps in 39 % overall yield. Synthesis was followed by analysis of these standards via quantitative NMR (qNMR) spectroscopy. Their utilisation for the identification and quantification of specific acetylated sialic acid derivatives in biological samples is also demonstrated.

Sugar-oligoamides: synthesis of DNA minor groove binders.

Sugar-oligoamides have been designed and synthesized as structurally simple carbohydrate-based ligands to study carbohydrate-minor groove DNA interactions. Here we report an efficient solution-phase synthetic strategy to obtain two broad families of sugar-oligoamides. The first type, structure vector A (-Py[Me]-γ-Py-Ind), has a methyl group present as a substituent on the nitrogen of pyrrole B, connected to the C terminal of the oligoamide fragment. The second type, structure vector B (-Py[(CH(2))(11)OH]-γ-Py-Ind), has an alkyl chain present on the nitrogen of pyrrole B connected to the C terminal of the oligoamide fragment and has been designed to access to di- and multivalent sugar-oligoamides. By using sequential DIPC/HOBt coupling reactions, the oligoamide fragment -Py[R]-γ-Py-Ind has been constructed. The last coupling reaction between the anomeric amino sugar and the oligoamide fragment was carried out by activating the acid derivative as a BtO- ester, which has been performed by using TFFH. The isolated esters (BtO-Py[R]-γ-Py-Ind) were coupled with selected amino sugars using DIEA in DMF. The synthesis of two different selective model vectors (vector A (1) and vector B (2)) and two types of water-soluble sugar-oligoamide ligands, with vector A structure (compounds 3-7) and with vector B structure (compound 8), was carried out.

Synthesis and olfactory evaluation of bulky moiety-modified analogues to the sandalwood odorant Polysantol.

Five new bulky moiety-modified analogues of the sandalwood odorant Polysantol have been synthesized by aldol condensation of appropriate aldehydes with butanone, deconjugative alpha-methylation of the resulting alpha,beta-unsaturated ketones, and reduction of the corresponding beta,gamma-unsaturated ketones. The final compounds were evaluated organoleptically and one of them seemed to be of special interest for its natural sandalwood scent.

Sugar-oligoamides: bound-state conformation and DNA minor-groove-binding description by TR-NOESY and differential-frequency saturation-transfer-difference experiments.

Selective-frequency saturation-transfer-difference (STD) spectra allow the description of complexes established between minor-groove binders and long tracts of calf thymus DNA (ct-DNA). Two sets of experiments with selective saturation of either the H1' or H4'/H5'/H5'' proton NMR regions of deoxyribose allow the description of the ligand residues close to the inner (H1') and outer regions (H4'/H5'/H5'') of the minor groove of double-helical DNA. A series of complexes of sugar-oligoamides (2-6) with ct-DNA have been studied by both TR-NOESY and STD experiments. The binding mode of the complexes is similar to that of netropsin (1) and allows us to define a general binding mode for this family of ligands, in which an NH rim points towards the internal area (inner region) and a CH3 rim points towards the external part (outer region) of the minor groove of DNA. Also by means of both TR-NOESY and STD experiments, a description of the asymmetric centers of the sugar residue close to the inner and outer regions of the groove has been achieved. These results confirm that the sugar is responsible for the differences previously found in binding energetics.