ABSTRACT
Over the past two decades, there has been a steady and rapidly escalating interest in the important roles that carbohydrates play at the molecular level in many biological processes [l]. Their potential therapeutic value has already been addressed in the context of drug development [2]. Carbohydrate constituents of glycoconjugates on cell surfaces often act as elements for signaling, for transport, and for molecular recognition that are critical in cellular communication. The exciting achievements in the field of glycobiology, and parallel activities in the areas of antibiotic, antitumor, and antiviral therapies, have heralded a new carbohydrate-based bioscience that is deemed to be as important as proteins and nucleic acids. However, compared with peptides and oligonucleotides, which can be readily produced in an automated manner, complex carbohydrate oligomers are much more difficult to synthesize because of their multifunctionality and stereochemical variations. In spite of great strides toward the stereocontrolled synthesis of glycosides, much more needs to be done in this area. Thus, the development of efficient technologies for the construction of simple and complex glycosides remains as a challenging objective for synthetic chemists today.
