Globular Glycomacromolecules

In the last two decades, many synthetic strategies and improvements have been reported for a highly efficient preparation of glycodendrimers (based on PAMAM, PPl, polyester, polyamide, cyclodextrin, etc.) and glycodendrons 

The introduction of mono-, di-, and oligosaccharide units on dendritic surfaces is usually carried out as the final synthetic step in monodendron and dendrimer synthesis. For this purpose, well-known polymer analogous/ organic conversion steps are used amidation, esterification, reductive amina-tion, nucleophilic substitution, addition/elimination, thiol-ene reaction, 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition, and others (Fig. 5.22). 

Furthermore, simplicity is the driving force to further reduce the final coupling and deprotection steps on the dendritic surface to obtain the desired (oligo)saccharide-containing dendritic scaffolds. Much research has been focused on synthetic approaches in aqueous solution. As a result, reductive amination is now widely used under acidic and basic conditions, because it 

Oligo-, di-, and monosaccharide units = anomeric OH converted into 

FIGURE 5.22 Main functional groups for the introduction of oligo-, di-, and monosaccharide units on monodendron and dendrimer surfaces. (See insert for color representation of the figure.) 

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