Sugar acids, binding with boronic acid sensors

One important area of current research is on the recognition of carbohydrates. In particular, cell surface carbohydrates have implications in various disease states. In some forms of cancer, closely packed cell surface carbohydrates effect cancer progression and invasiveness. Many of these carbohydrates have terminal sialic acid groups. The pinwheel receptor 42 was designed as a divalent receptor for anionic sugars including sialic acid with a view toward making sensors for cancer markers. Sensor 42 used a boronic acid to bind a diol on the... 

Chemical sensors based on the competitive binding of sugars to the boronic add ligand have been reported. When 3-aminophenyl boronic acid was covalently linked to GSH-capped CdSe-ZnS QDs, the boronic acid ligand formed boronate esters with... 

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