The importance of glycosidase inhibitors and especially the bicyclic molecules has led to design and assessment of many analogs of naturally occurring molecules. This review focuses on the synthesis and enzyme inhibitions of a few selected (synthetic or non-naturally occurring) molecules that have been reported in the last decade, which allow one to draw some connection between varying the structural features and their effect on glycosidase inhibitions. It is expected that further improvements based on these features could lead to improved inhibitors.

Azidation of 1,2-anhydro sugars with NaN(3) in CH(3)CN by using a catalytic amount of ceric ammonium nitrate has been accomplished in a regio- and stereoselective manner. Various 1,2-anhydro sugars produced 2-hydroxy-1-azido sugars in good yields which, in turn, were converted to structurally diverse sugar-derived morpholine triazoles and sugar oxazin-2-ones. These sugar derivatives were tested against various commercially available glycosidases, and two of them were found to be active in the micromolar range.

Synthesis of dihydroxymethyl dihydroxypyrrolidines from C-2 formyl D-glycals has been described via a common dicarbonyl intermediate. The hence obtained pyrrolidines have been further utilized for the synthesis of some steviamine analogues. The newly synthesized molecules have been evaluated for glycosidase inhibition against 6 commercially available enzymes and found to be active in the micromolar range, where one of the steviamine analogues showed good and selective inhibition of β-mannosidase (Helix pomatia).

A few bicyclic hybrid sugar molecules comprising of oxa-aza, oxa-oxa, and oxa-carbasugar fused skeletons were designed and synthesized from C-2 acetoxyglucal involving Ferrier rearrangement, Grignard addition, and ring-closing metathesis as key steps. The inhibitory activities of the synthesized molecules were tested against commercially available enzymes, which revealed the sugar-piperidine and sugar-pyran hybrids as potent and selective inhibitors.

The carbon-Ferrier rearrangement is the reaction of appropriately functionalised glycals, with a variety of carbon nucleophiles such as allyltrimethylsilanes, alkynyltrimethylsilanes, silyl cyanides etc. involving the corresponding nucleophilic addition at the anomeric carbon with concomitant loss of a substituent at C-3. This leads to double bond migration to give 2,3-unsaturated sugars which act as useful chiral substrates for further manipulations in organic synthesis.

SummaryA carbon-Ferrier rearrangement on glycals has been performed by using ceric ammonium nitrate to obtain products in moderate to good yields with high selectivity. The versatility of this method has been demonstrated by applying it to differently protected glycals and by employing several nucleophiles. The obtained C-allyl glycoside has been utilized for the synthesis of a orthogonally protected 2-amino-2-deoxy-C-glycoside.

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Differently substituted ascorbic-acid-derived allylic alcohols were used to study the Overman rearrangement under thermal and palladium-catalysed conditions. It was found that protection of the δ alcohol substituent as a a tert-butyldimethylsilyl ether followed by Overman rearrangement using