Ring opening metathesis poymerisation (ROMP) followed by catalytic dihydroxylation affords macromolecules with 1,2-diol structures. These new macromolecular compositions represent C-glycoside analogues of ribofuranose polymers that are thermally and hydrolytically stable.Carbohydrate-protein interactions play an important role in many biological processes. Polysulfates derived from carbohydrates were recognized as potent and selective inhibitors of the in vitro replication of HIV and other enveloped viruses. In the case of sulfated dextrans the activity strongly depended on the molar mass of the oligosaccharides. 1,2 The design of new carbohydrate-analogue polymers is of special interest in polymer chemistry and life sciences-applications range from drug systems to novel biocompatible materials and surface coatings. Ring-opening metathesis polymerisation (ROMP) offers attractive potential for the synthesis of well defined carbohydrate analogue polymers. The modern catalyst generations, developed by Schrock and Grubbs, tolerate polar groups and afford living polymerisation which is the key to molar mass control. Novel families of ROMP glycopolymers were prepared by Kiessling, Schrock, Grubbs and co-workers 3-7 using sugarsubstituted derivatives of norbornene and 7-oxanorbornenes as monomers. Since conventional polysaccarides are prone to metabolic degradation by glycosidases due to their glycosidic linkages, 2 hydrolytically stable carbohydrate-analogue compounds without glycoside linkages in the backbone represent interesting candidates for biomedical applications (Fig. 1).Here we present a versatile synthetic method for the preparation of novel polyribofuranose analogue polymers which do not contain glycoside linkages between the monomeric units in the polymer backbone that are prone to metabolic degradation by glycosidases. This should provide an oligosaccharide analogue structure with improved biocompatibility and longer half-life times. Initial research on related oligosaccharide-analogue polymers was reported by Clark and Lee 8 who used ROMP of 7-oxanorbornene diol derivatives. Since the double bonds of the polymer backbone were hydrogenated, the resulting saccharide-analogue polymers contained only two hydroxy groups per repeating unit. The objective of our research was the synthesis of polymers containing fully hydroxylated repeating units. These are pseudo-polyribofuranoses, with structures very similar to those of natural carbohydrates. The synthetic strategy displayed in Scheme 1 employs ROMP of dihydroxy-substituted bicyclic olefin monomers and subsequent dihydroxylation of the double bonds in the polymer backbone.Both pure 2-exo, 3-exo-7-oxanorbornene diol 1a and the corresponding endo isomer 1b were synthesized according to a literature procedure. 9 Unfortunately, all attempts to perform ring-opening metathesis polymerisation in water, employing the water soluble Grubbs catalyst RuCl 2 (NCHPh)-[Cy 2 PCH 2 CH 2 N(CH 3 ) 3 + Cl 2 ] 2 7 failed. Therefore, compounds 1a and 1b were transformed into their...