Multivalent interactions with carbohydrates

Carbohydrate-protein interactions are usually highly speeifie. As with carbohydrate-carbohydrate interactions, multivalence is essential, beeause multiple interactions between carbohydrates and proteins are necessary to aehieve strong binding or enhanced inhibition. In pursuit of synthetic targets where carbohydrates are multiply displayed over suitable scaffolds, a number of model systems have been used to study multivalent interactions between carbohydrates and proteins.GNPs have also been used in this field, and the results have been reviewed. ... 

Carbohydrates not only interact with protein receptors, but also with other carbohydrates and nucleic acids. Recently, gold nanoparticles (GNPs) have been prepared as new multivalent tools that mimic carbohydrate presentation on the cell surface. Using this tool, a weak calcium-mediated carbohydrate-carbohydrate interaction has been detected using NMR, employing... 

Multivalent protein-carbohydrate interactions mediate many intercellular recognition processes. In order to study and to modulate multivalent protein-carbohydrate interactions, many carbohydrate-functionalized frameworks and systems have been synthesized. The glycodendrimer is one important glycosystem that has been used to study lectin binding. For our work, glycodendrimers based on the PAMAM framework are ideal because of the inherently flexible nature of PAMAM and because of the ease with which PAMAMs can be functionalized with carbohydrates. 

Owing to the weakness of carbohydrate receptor-protein interactions, in order to attain biological meaningful affinities for the receptor, carbohydrates very often need to be clustered and expressed in multiple copies. For this purpose glycodendrimers, which are multivalent glycoconjugates with well-defined chemical structures, have received recent attention for their considerable potential as tools for studying cell-surface protein-carbohydrate interactions, because of the affinity enhancement obtained by multivalency. 

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