Sialoside Arrays: New Synthetic Strategies and Applications

Sialic acid-containing carbohydrates, or sialosides, play critical roles in many biological events and in diseases, including viral and bacterial infections, the immune response, the progression of tumor cell metastasis, etc. Despite the importance, the limited access to complex sialosides had prevented extensive studies on the function and significance of sialic acid structural diversity. However, recent advances in synthetic sialoside chemistry, such as the novel chemoenzymatic or stereochemical approach, have produced homogeneous size- and structure-defined sialosides to create diverse sialosides for array application. The advantage of sialoside arrays is the multivalent display of arrayed sialosides which can serve to mimic cell surface display; thus, an array-based technique is well suited for investigations of the real sialoside-mediated interactions in nature. In brief, this chapter discusses the novel strategies for synthesizing sialosides with selected examples of applications to illustrate the potential of sialoside arrays and further forecast to the trend of using nanotechnology in sialoside arrays.