Carbohydrate scaffolds glycocluster

Fig. 15. Various mannosylated glycoclusters built around carbohydrate scaffolds.160-162...

Inositols, although more robust than carbohydrates, are less readily available and only rarely used as cores for glycocluster synthesis. Recently,. vn/fo-inositol has been utilized as scaffold for the synthesis of a multivalent glycoconjugate according to a bi-directional synthetic route (Fig. 19). This allowed the number of terminal sugars to be varied, as well as attachment of the glycoclusters to a carrier (e.g. for the construction of microarrays [142]). 

A particularly relevant class of biomolecules comprises the so-called glycoproteins or glycopeptides. As with protein-protein (such as RGD-integrin) interactions, the interactions between carbohydrates and proteins facilitate many important biological processes [11, 12). Monovalent carbohydrate-protein interactions show very weak binding affinities (Kj 10 to 10 M) [7], while multivalent interactions frequently enhance the affinity due to the so-called g/y-coside cluster effects [13,14]. In order to study multivalent carbohydrate-protein interactions, multivalent glycoclusters are required. Polymers, dendrimers, benzene scaffolds, monosaccharides, and others can be used as the base to affix multiple carbohydrate units. Chen et al. [15] chose the cyclic decapeptide cyclo-[GPKAKGPKKK] where the Lys 3, 5, 8, and 10 residues were used for functionalization with propiolic acid to yield the tetravalent alkyne 8a, while... 

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