Ligands for Siglecs

Located at the terminus of numerous cell-surface oligosaccharides, sialic acids are ideally positioned to participate in biological processes including cell-biomolecule-mediated recognition phenomena, acting as receptors for viruses and bacteria, cellcell communication, and as markers in certain diseases [9, 27, 29], 

Extensive research has focused on the synthesis of structurally modified sialic acid derivatives and sialylmimetics as probes or potential inhibitors of specific sialic acid-recognizing proteins, and several comprehensive overviews have been published [26, 30-34], An underlying theme in efforts directed toward the development of novel sialic acid derivatives as biological probes is the complexity of the chemical manipulations associated with sialic acids [30, 32], The chemical strategies and conditions for sialylation are discussed in Chapter 5. 

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FIGURE 18.3 High-binding ligands for Siglec-9 (1) and Siglec-10 (2). Ac, acetyl. 

DESIGN AND SYNTHESIS OF HIGH-AFFINITY LIGANDS FOR SIGLECS... 

Bochner BS, Alvarez RA, Mehta P, Bovin NV, Blixt O, White JR, Schnaar RL. Glycan array screening reveals a candidate ligand for Siglec-8. J. Biol. Chem. 2005 280 4307-4312. 

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