The continuing ability of bacteria to resist current antibiotic treatments highlights the need for alternative strategies for inhibiting their pathogenicity. Bacterial attachment is a major factor in infectivity and virulence. This key binding phase of bacteria to any potential host is mediated by adhesin proteins and so these present an attractive therapeutic target for antiinfective blocking strategies. However, the natural ligands to adhesins are large, typically complex molecules that are difficult to mimic with small molecules. We describe here a method that creates precise synthetic mimics of glycoproteins that are designed to bind adhesins. By using protein-degrading enzymes as the basis for these mimics we have created large-molecule protein ligands that inhibit aggregation of pathogenic bacteria at levels greater than a million-fold higher than small-molecule inhibitors of adhesins.

[reaction: see text] Glycosyl disulfides have been shown for the first time to be effective glycosyl donors. Glucosylation and galactosylation of a panel of representative alcohol acceptors allowed the formation of 28 simple glycosides, disaccharides, and glycoamino acids in yields of up to 90%. As well as providing a novel class of effective glycosyl donors, the ability to easily alter the nature of the aglycon and the ability to differently activate donors that differ only in their aglycon simply through altering conditions lends glycosyl disulfide donors to their use in latent-active reactivity tuning strategies.