Accelerated Solid Phase Glycan Synthesis: ASGS.

Solid phase synthesis is the most dominant approach for the preparation of biological oligomers as it enables the introduction of monomers iteratively. Accelerated solid phase synthesis of biological oligomers is crucial for chemical biology, but its application to the synthesis of oligosaccharides is not trivial. Solid-phase oligosaccharide assembly is a slow process performed in a variety of conditions and temperatures, requires an inert gas atmosphere, and demands high excess of glycosyl donors. The process is done in special synthesizers and poor mixing of the solid support increases the risk of diffusion-independent hydrolysis of the activated donors. High shear stirring is a new way to accelerate solid phase synthesis. The efficient mixing ensures that reactive intermediates can diffuse faster to the solid support thereby increasing the kinetics of the reactions. We report here a stirring-based accelerated solid-phase oligosaccharide synthesis. We harnessed high shear mixing to perform diffusion-dependent glycosylation in a short reaction time. We minimized the use of glycosyl donors and the need to use an inert atmosphere. We showed that by tailoring the deprotection and glycosylation conditions to the same temperature, assembly steps are performed continuously, and full glycosylation cycles are completed in minutes.

Translating solution to solid phase glycosylation conditions.

Optimization of glycosylation conditions for automated glycan assembly is highly challenging, demands wasteful use of precious building blocks, and relies on nontrivial analyses. We developed a semi-quantitative method for automated optimization of glycosylation temperature that utilized minute quantities of donors and translated those conditions to solid-phase glycan assembly.

Automated Quantification of Hydroxyl Reactivities: Prediction of Glycosylation Reactions.

The stereoselectivity and yield in glycosylation reactions are paramount but unpredictable. We have developed a database of acceptor nucleophilic constants (Aka) to quantify the nucleophilicity of hydroxyl groups in glycosylation influenced by the steric, electronic and structural effects, providing a connection between experiments and computer algorithms. The subtle reactivity differences among the hydroxyl groups on various carbohydrate molecules can be defined by Aka, which is easily accessible by a simple and convenient automation system to assure high reproducibility and accuracy. A diverse range of glycosylation donors and acceptors with well-defined reactivity and promoters were organized and processed by the designed software program "GlycoComputer" for prediction of glycosylation reactions without involving sophisticated computational processing. The importance of Aka was further verified by random forest algorithm, and the applicability was tested by the synthesis of a Lewis A skeleton to show that the stereoselectivity and yield can be accurately estimated.

Establishment of Guidelines for the Control of Glycosylation Reactions and Intermediates by Quantitative Assessment of Reactivity.

Stereocontrolled chemical glycosylation remains a major challenge despite vast efforts reported over many decades and so far still mainly relies on trial and error. Now it is shown that the relative reactivity value (RRV) of thioglycosides is an indicator for revealing stereoselectivities according to four types of acceptors. Mechanistic studies show that the reaction is dominated by two distinct intermediates: glycosyl triflates and glycosyl halides from N-halosuccinimide (NXS)/TfOH. The formation of glycosyl halide is highly correlated with the production of α-glycoside. These findings enable glycosylation reactions to be foreseen by using RRVs as an α/ß-selectivity indicator and guidelines and rules to be developed for stereocontrolled glycosylation.

"One-Pot" Protection, Glycosylation, and Protection-Glycosylation Strategies of Carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates, which are ubiquitously distributed throughout the three domains of life, play significant roles in a variety of vital biological processes. Access to unique and homogeneous carbohydrate materials is important to understand their physical properties, biological functions, and disease-related features. It is difficult to isolate carbohydrates in acceptable purity and amounts from natural sources. Therefore, complex saccharides with well-defined structures are often most conviently accessed through chemical syntheses. Two major hurdles, regioselective protection and stereoselective glycosylation, are faced by carbohydrate chemists in synthesizing these highly complicated molecules. Over the past few years, there has been a radical change in tackling these problems and speeding up the synthesis of oligosaccharides. This is largely due to the development of one-pot protection, one-pot glycosylation, and one-pot protection-glycosylation protocols and streamlined approaches to orthogonally protected building blocks, including those from rare sugars, that can be used in glycan coupling. In addition, new automated strategies for oligosaccharide syntheses have been reported not only for program-controlled assembly on solid support but also by the stepwise glycosylation in solution phase. As a result, various sugar molecules with highly complex, large structures could be successfully synthesized. To summarize these recent advances, this review describes the methodologies for one-pot protection and their one-pot glycosylation into the complex glycans and the chronological developments associated with automated syntheses of oligosaccharides.

Synthesis of d-Galactosamine and d-Allosamine Derivatives via a Microwave-Assisted Preparation of 1,6-Anhydroglucosamine.

We report a microwave-assisted intramolecular anomeric protection (iMAP) of glucosamine, which facilitates concise transformation of 1,6-anhydroglucosamine into 1,6-anhydrogalactosamine and 1,6-anhydroallosamine. The iMAP simultaneously obviates both the O1 and O6 protection, and the differentiation between O3 and O4 can be well-controlled by the N2 functionality because of the hydrogen bonding between N2 and O4. Epimerization of O4 afforded the galactosamine derivative and that of O3 yielded allosamine.