Molecular diversity through sugar scaffolds

• Published in: Drug Discovery Today Vol. 8; no. 15; pp. 701 - 709
• Main Authors: Thanh Le, Giang, Abbenante, Giovanni, Becker, Bernd, Grathwohl, Matthias, Halliday, Judy, Tometzki, Gerry, Zuegg, Johannes, Meutermans, Wim
• Format: Book Review Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.08.2003; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: Animals; Biological and medical sciences; Carbohydrate; Carbohydrates - chemistry; Combinatorial Chemistry Techniques - methods; drug discovery; Humans; libraries; Medical sciences; Molecular Conformation; Molecular Structure; monosaccharides; scaffold; scaffolds; Stereoisomerism; structural diversity; libraries; Carbohydrate; drug discovery; scaffold; structural diversity
• ISSN: 1359-6446; 1878-5832
• DOI: 10.1016/S1359-6446(03)02751-X

Monosaccharides provide an excellent platform to tailor molecular diversity by appending desired substituents at selected positions around the sugar scaffold. The presence of five functionalized and stereo-controlled centres on the sugar scaffolds gives the chemist plenty of scope to custom design molecules to a pharmacophore model. This review focuses on the peptidomimetic developments in this area, as well as the concept of tailoring structural and functional diversity in a library using carbohydrate scaffolds and how this can lead to increased hit rates and rapid identification of leads, which has promising prospects for drug development. With applications ranging from single peptido-mimetics to libraries of tailored structural and functional diversity, carbohydrates prove to be versatile chemical ‘leggo blocks’ for building new classes of bioactive molecules with promising prospect for drug development.