Revolutionizing Glycan Synthesis

Background

Glycans and their conjugated forms, including peptidoglycans, glycoproteins, glycopeptides, glycolipids, and lipopolysaccharides, play key roles in a variety of vital biological processes and many pathological events, including signal transduction, fertilization, metathesis, cell-cell adhesion, viral infection, and immune responses. Chemical synthesis of these complex carbohydrate structures hinges on the stereoselective construction of glycosidic bonds, can only be performed by well-trained carbohydrate chemists, and may require significant time commitment, due to the unpredictable nature of various transformations. As a result, there is an unmitigated bottleneck in studying complex glycans for their cellular functions and medical utilities, due to the lack of material access. The solution to this long-standing challenge is the development of highly stereoselective glycosylation of broad applicability, with high efficiency, and in a short duration. With these features, automated synthesis of complex glycans can become a reality. Like a peptide or nucleic acid synthesizer empowering a broad range of biomedical research, an automated glycan synthesizer can spur dramatic advances in glycobiology and glycomedicine by making complex glycan available to biomedical researchers.

Technology Overview

Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, have developed a technology that introduces a novel directing group on leaving group strategy for SN2 glycosylation. It employs a mild, cost-effective, and functional group-compatible stoichiometric activation strategy. This approach is highly stereoselective, efficient, and broadly applicable, making it ideal for the automated synthesis of complex glycans. It is particularly effective in forming challenging 1,2-cis-glycosidic linkages, a common bottleneck in glycan synthesis.

Benefits

• Fills a critical technological gap in stereospecific glycosylation synthesis
• Enables significant advances in glycobiology and glycomedicine development
• Cost-effective and offers rapid reaction times, ranging from 30 minutes to 1 hour

Applications

• Stereospecific glycosylation motif that enable automation

Opportunity

This technology is available for licensing.