Chemical synthesis of carbohydrates and their surface immobilization: a brief introduction

For all carbohydrate microarrays, two important prerequisites are necessary: the carbohydrate of interest has to be obtained either by isolation from natural sources, enzymatic or chemical synthesis; an immobilization of the carbohydrate at the surface of the chip has to be achieved. This chapter provides a very brief overview of the chemical synthesis of carbohydrates (creation of building blocks, assembly, and deprotection) and of immobilization techniques. Numerous methods are known to construct oligosaccharides by chemical methods. A typical monosaccharide building block, used in oligosaccharide assembly, is equipped with different protecting groups that mask the hydroxyl and amine groups. In general, a good leaving group at the anomeric center that can easily be activated is mandatory; especially trichloroacetimidates, phosphates, and thioethers have been widely used for the creation of glycosidic bonds. After the complete assembly of the oligosaccharide, a global deprotection of all permanent protecting groups affords the desired target structure with free hydroxyl groups. Linkers, which were introduced during the synthesis, must often be modified at the end to create appropriate functionalities for surface immobilization.