Recent developments in solid- and solution-phase methods for generating carbohydrate libraries

Carbohydrates and glycoconjugates have attracted a great deal of attention in recent years because of the key roles they play in biological processes. The development of carbohydrate-based libraries is a crucial step towards investigating the details of carbohydrate-mediated interactions, exploring the molecular diversity intrinsic to carbohydrates and identifying novel therapeutically interesting carbohydrate-containing drugs. This review describes recent advancements in solid- and solution-phase methods that relate to the generation of carbohydrate and glycoconjugate libraries. Special attention will be dedicated to the increasing use of carbohydrates as molecular scaffolds for library synthesis.