A convenient method for the cleavage of the D-mannosyl-L-gulose disaccharide from bleomycin-A2

In order to elucidate the biological role of the sugar residue of the antitumor drug bleomycin, this was deglycosylated by beta-elimination under mild alkaline conditions, and by solvolysis with hydrogen fluoride. The latter procedure proved to be better because it led to the complete deglycosylation without modification of the peptide, thus allowing further biological investigations of this component.