ABSTRACT

Since the pioneering work of Karl Freudenberg on displacements of carbohydrate p-toluenesulfonates [l-5], bimolecular nucleophilic substitutions became one of the most employed and useful reactions in carbohydrate chemistry. Indeed SN2-type reactions have allowed the introduction of a variety of heteroatoms (halogens, N-, 0-, S-) into carbohydrates, and the resulting compounds have been used in many synthetic and biological contexts [6).