Apramycin is a structurally unique member of the 2-deoxystreptamine class of aminoglycoside antibiotics characterized by a mono-substituted 2-deoxystreptamine ring that carries an unusual bicyclic eight-carbon dialdose moiety. Because of its unusual structure apramycin is not susceptible to the most prevalent mechanisms of aminoglycoside resistance including the aminoglycoside-modifying enzymes and the ribosomal methyltransferases whose widespread presence severely compromises all aminoglycosides in current clinical practice. These attributes coupled with minimal ototoxocity in animal models combine to make apramycin an excellent starting point for the development of next-generation aminoglycoside antibiotics for the treatment

This paper is dedicated to Professor Sambasivarao Kotha on the occasion of his 65 th birthday

We have developed a new catalyst system comprising AuCl3 and phenylacetylene that promotes the Ferrier rearrangement of glycals and 2‐acetoxymethylglycals with different nucleophiles, and also the O‐glycosylation of 1‐O‐acetyl sugars to obtain a variety of useful glycosides at room temperature through relay catalysis. Good anomeric selectivity was observed for the Ferrier rearrangements, whereas the O‐glycosylation of 1‐O‐acetyl sugars gave mixtures of diastereomers with moderate to excellent selectivity.

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.

A "Prins pinacol type rearrangement followed by C4-OBn participation" in a cascade manner has been observed while probing the fate of carbocation in some carbohydrate derived homoallylic alcohols in the Prins reaction. This has led to an easy access to tetrahydrofuran-fused bridged bicyclic ketals (or tetrahydrofuran-fused 1,6-anhydro-heptopyranose frameworks) which are further converted into some annulated sugars and C2-branched heptoses.

Complementing our earlier syntheses of the gentamicins B1, C1a, C2b, and X2, we describe the synthesis of gentamicins C1, C2, and C2a characterized by methyl substitution at the 6′-position, and so present an alternative access to previous chromatographic methods for accessing these sought-after compounds. We describe the antiribosomal activity of our full set of synthetic gentamicin congeners against bacterial ribosomes and hybrid ribosomes carrying the decoding A site of the human mitochondrial, A1555G mutant mitochondrial, and cytoplasmic ribosomes and establish structure−activity relationships with the substitution pattern around ring I to antiribosomal activity, antibacterial resistance due to the presence of aminoglycoside acetyl transferases acting on the 6′-position in ring I, and literature cochlear toxicity data.

1-O-Acetylfuranoses and pyranose 1,2-orthoesters were activated with an Au III halide/phenylacetylene relay catalyst system, and they acted as excellent glycosyl donors. Thus, 1-O-acetyl-D-ribofuranose, 1-O-acetyl-D-lyxofuranose, and 1,2-

The clinical aminoglycoside antibiotic gentamicin is a mixture of several difficult-to-separate major and minor components. The relative inaccessibility of the minor components in particular complicates efforts to separate antibacterial activity from nephro- and/or ototoxicity and to clarify the origin of the potentially therapeutically important read-through activity. With a view to facilitating such studies, the synthesis of a fully and selectively protected garamine-based acceptor has been developed from readily available sisomicin. Glycosylation of this acceptor with a 6-azido-6,7-dideoxy-d-glycero-d-glucohepto­pyranosyl donor affords gentamicin B1 after deprotection, whereas employment of a 2-azido-2-deoxy-d-glucopyranosyl donor under N,N-dimethylformamide-directed glycosylation conditions affords gentamicin X2 after deprotection.