Dedicated to Professor Bernd Giese on the occasion of this 80th birthday.

SummaryIn this article a series of divalent and trivalent carbohydrate mimetics on the basis of an enantiopure aminopyran and of serinol is described. These aminopolyols are connected by amide bonds to carboxylic acid derived spacer units either by Schotten–Baumann acylation or by coupling employing HATU as reagent. The O-sulfation employing the SO3·DMF complex was optimized. It was crucial to follow this process by 700 MHz 1H NMR spectroscopy to ensure full conversion and to use a refined neutralization and purification protocol. Many of the compounds could not be tested as L-selectin inhibitor by SPR due to their insolubility in water, nevertheless, a divalent and a trivalent amide showed surprisingly good activities with IC50 values in the low micromolar range.

Several important antimicrobial drugs act by permeabilizing cell membranes. In this study, we showed that the intensity of membrane permeability caused by antimicrobial cationic amphiphiles can be modified not only by their concentration but also through light-induced isomerization of their lipid segment. Two types of photo-isomerizable cationic amphiphiles were developed and the effects of photo-isomerization on bacterial growth and membrane permeability were evaluated. One photo-isomer inhibited cell growth and division, whereas the other photo-isomer led to a rapid and lethal bacterial membrane-disrupting effect. The switch from "on" to "off" can be obtained by either the cis- or trans-isomer depending on the bacterial strain and the type of cationic amphiphile. These cationic amphiphiles offer a novel tool for research and industrial applications that require light-controlled bacterial membrane permeabilization.

Starting from an enantiopure 3‐azido‐substituted pyran derivative and various oligo‐alkynes a series of multivalent 1,2,3‐triazole‐linked carbohydrate mimetics was synthesized. The copper‐catalyzed Huisgen–Meldal‐Sharpless cycloaddition (CuAAC) served as key coupling reaction. Cu/C in the presence of triethylamine proved to be a good catalytic system in most cases. Tri‐, tetra‐, hexa‐, and octavalent compounds with typical rigid or flexible core units were prepared. The most complex compound contains a C60‐fullerene center leading to a dodecavalent carbohydrate mimetic. Only a few of the multivalent target compounds could be converted into pure O‐sulfated derivatives that are required for their evaluation as L‐ and P‐selectin ligands. Nevertheless, preliminary experiments suggest that the dodecavalent C60‐derived compound may be a promising ligand of these biologically important proteins with IC50 values in the low nanomolar range.

A direct approach to mono-and divalent carbohydrate mimetics starting from an enantiopure 1,2-oxazine derivative is described. After the Lewis acid induced rearrangement and subsequent reduction to provide the expected bicyclic 1,2-oxazine derivative as major component, a new tricyclic compound resulting from a different rearrangement pathway was isolated in small amounts. A smooth and optimized method for the hydrogenation of the bicyclic 1,2-oxazine derivative is presented, affording the desired aminopyran with D-idopyranose configuration. By reductive amination this aminopyran was connected with different aldehydes to furnish N-alkylated compounds. Reductive amination using 1,5-pentanedial resulted in the formation of a piperidine ring. With rigid aromatic dialdehydes the desired divalent compounds were obtained in good to excellent yields. Similar divalent carbohydrate mimetics were prepared from serinol.