Glycan Carriers As Glycotools for Medicinal Chemistry Applications

Abstract

Carbohydrates are one of the most powerful and versatile classes of biomolecules that nature uses to regulate organisms’ biochemistry, modulating plenty of signaling events within cells, triggering a plethora of physiological and pathological cellular behaviors. In this framework, glycan carrier systems or carbohydrate-decorated materials constitute interesting and relevant tools for medicinal chemistry applications. In the last few decades, efforts have been focused, among others, on the development of multivalent glycoconjugates, biosensors, glycoarrays, carbohydrate-decorated biomaterials for regenerative medicine, and glyconanoparticles. This review aims to provide the reader with a general overview of the different carbohydrate carrier systems that have been developed as tools in different medicinal chemistry approaches relying on carbohydrate-protein interactions. Given the extent of this topic, the present review will focus on selected examples that highlight the advancements and potentialities offered by this specific area of research, rather than being an exhaustive literature survey of any specific glyco-functionalized system.

Cu(I)-Catalyzed Click Chemistry in Glycoscience and Their Diverse Applications

“…Through these representative examples, it is obvious to draw the conclusion that highly efficient CuAAC conjugation chemistry is a powerful high-throughput polar immobilization tool for the successful fabrication of surface-based glycan microarrays and monolayer-assisted lectin–sugar interaction assays for the recognition of particular proteins of great pathological significance. In addition to their significant role in carbohydrate–protein interactions, glycan microarrays have also emerged as a powerful tool for study of the interaction of carbohydrates with a variety of other glycan binding molecules, including antibodies, cells, bacteria, and viruses. ,− All together the merits associated with glycan microarrays make them an ideal tool to explore in the growing area of biomedicines, particularly to assist the discovery of novel diagnostic tools for disease detection, mainly cancer diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutics, such as enzyme inhibitors, autoimmune diseases, infectious diseases, and vaccine development. Although research on glycan microarrays is rather difficult and challenging and only a few groups are working worldwide on this theme, beyond doubt, there are tremendous opportunities available.…”

Amino acid modified OCMC-g-Suc-β-CD nanohydrogels carrying lapatinib and ginsenoside Rg1 exhibit high anticancer activity in a zebrafish model

“…Chitosan (CS) is an amino-rich polysaccharide obtained by deacetylation of chitin presented in cuticles of crustaceans ( Bourbon et al, 2018 ; Mattia et al, 2019 ). Under acidic condition, CS can form nanohydrogels due to the formation of NH 3+ groups ( Jain et al, 2012 ; Jiang et al, 2014 ; Zhang et al, 2018 ).…”

An Efficient Microwave-Mediated Synthesis of Hexavalent Sialic Acid Sulfoglycodendrimers as Potential Anti-HIV Agents

“…The interest in pursuing macromolecules as potential therapeutic agents is on the rise. In the realm of polymeric materials, dendrimers and glycodendrimers represent an interesting niche of nanomaterials that can be implemented for a variety of biological applications such as drug carriers, antiviral agents, and gene delivery vehicles, to name a few. − Dendrimers are multivalent monomolecular polymers that are protein-like in their globular shapes and flexible in terms of design features such as size, number/type of end groups, and degree of hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity. Like dendrimers, glycodendrimers have versatile structures and have been incorporated in widespread applications in biology and medicine because of their ability to establish multivalent interactions with proteins/glycoproteins .…”