Fluorescent glycosidase inhibiting 1,5-dideoxy-1,5-iminoalditols

1,5-Dideoxy-1,5-iminoalditols of various configurations as well as isofagomine were N-alkylated with non-polar straight chain spacer-arms by a set of simple standard procedures. The spacer-arms' terminal functional groups, primary amines, were employed to introduce fluorescent tags such as dansyl and dapoxyl moieties. Resulting derivatives in the D-xylo, D-gluco, D-galacto as well as GlcNAc series showed distinctly improved glycosidase inhibitory activities compared to parent compounds and are designed to be useful analytical tools.