Design and synthesis of a multivalent homing device for targeting to murine CD22

CD22 is a cell-surface glycoprotein uniquely located on mature B-cells and B-cell derived tumour cells. Current evidence suggests that binding of endogenous ligands to CD22 leads to modulation of B-cell activation by antigen. Incidentally, however, B-cell activation may derail. and lead to an undesired immune response, for example in cases of allergy, rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease. In this situation, synthetic high-affinity ligands for CD22 may be of therapeutic value as inhibitors of B-cell activation. Recent studies have revealed that natural ligands for CD22 contain the trisaccharide NeuAc alpha-2,6-Lac as the basic binding motif. In addition, it has been demonstrated that binding to CD22 is strongly enhanced by multivalent presentation of the basic binding motif (cluster effect). In this paper. the stepwise development of a novel multivalent high-affinity ligand for CD22 is described. In the first stage, a series of monovalent NeuAc alpha-2,6-Glc(Y)X type binding motifs was prepared, and their affinity for murine CD22 was monitored, to obtain more insight into the effect of separate structure elements on ligand recognition. In the second stage, we prepared a trivalent cluster, based on the monovalent motif that displayed the highest affinity for CD22, NeuAc alpha-2,6-GlcNBzNO2OMe (7). This cluster, TRIS(NeuAc alpha-2,6-GlcNBzNO2)3 (52), displayed a more than 58-fold higher affinity for CD22 than the reference structure NeuAc alpha-2,6-LacOMe (10). To our knowledge, the cluster 52 is one of the most potent antagonists for CD22 yet synthesised.