Oligosaccharides efficient chemical synthesis

Kovac, P, Efficient chemical synthesis of methyl (i-glycosides of 3-(1 — 6)-linked D-galacto-oligosaccharides hy a stepwise and a hlockwise approach, Carbohydr. Res., 153, 237-251, 1986. 

Despite the great deal of progress made in the chemical synthesis of oligosaccharides, there is still room for innovation and improvement over existing methods. The need for rapid and efficient construction of oligosaccharides has dramatically increased owing to the recent advances in glycobiology and related research fields [21],... 

The chemical synthesis of oligosaccharides has been a major focus since the 1980s [8] as a result of our increased understanding of the importance of these sugars in many life processes [3]. Although with low efficiency and sometimes with tremendous difficulties, almost all the sugar linkages known in nature have been synthesized. 

FAB, introduced in 1981, was the major ionization method for oligosaccharides for the next decade. Although it is still used to monitor products of chemical synthesis, it is now regarded as mainly of historical interest with the advent of ESI and MALDI, which have much lower backgrounds. Nevertheless, much excellent work with carbohydrates has been reported using this method (e.g., see Refs. 17-20), which was one of the first techniques that allowed large intact carbohydrates to be ionized efficiently. 

Consequently, the most active ohgosaccharides should be airiorric or neutral with degree of polymerization between 4 and 30 partially pyruvate, phosphate, sulfate or acetylate. Nevertheless, very low amoimt of specific bioactive structirres have been reported. Many researches lead to an impact that oligosaccharides and their derivatives are in demand. Thus the production of more and more bioactive ohgosaccharides are looked for in the development of ohgosaecharide-based therapies and are required to efficiently improve errzymatic and chemical synthesis processes [74, 55, 134]. 

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