Light-driven chemistry builds tougher sugar molecules for new medicines
Li Y, Jiang C, Zhang JF, Zhang SL, Chen L
Medicinal Plants
Many of the protective compounds plants make, like the bitter glycosides in dandelion leaves or the flavonoids in tea, rely on these same sugar-to-carbon bonds, and cracking an easier way to build them in the lab could speed up turning plant chemistry into new drugs.
Scientists reviewed a bunch of new lab tricks that use plain visible light to glue sugar molecules onto other chemical building blocks in a tougher, more stable way. These sugar-linked molecules, called C-glycosides, show up throughout nature and are prized in medicine because they resist being broken down by the body. The review compares different starting materials and methods so future researchers can pick the best approach for making these molecules.
Key Findings
Glycosyl radical precursors are organized into three groups based on how they're activated: reductive, oxidative, and electron donor-acceptor/energy transfer pathways
Visible-light photoredox catalysis allows milder, more selective, and more sustainable generation of glycosyl radicals compared to older methods
The review evaluates each precursor class for stability, ease of access, functional group tolerance, and stereoselectivity in building complex C-glycosides
chevron_right Technical Summary
Chemists reviewed new light-powered methods for building a type of sugar-linked molecule called C-glycosides, which are more stable in the body than ordinary sugar bonds and are valuable for designing new medicines.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Visible-light-induced glycosyl radicals from diverse precursors for C-glycosylation.
C-Glycosides are crucial structural motifs in drug discovery and biology due to their enhanced metabolic stability and resistance to enzymatic hydrolysis compared to their O-glycoside counterparts....
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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