Reconsidering glycosylations at high temperature: precise microwave heating

Microwave effect for glycosylation promoted by solid super acid in supercritical carbon dioxide

The effects of microwave irradiation (2.45 GHz, 200 W) on glycosylation promoted by a solid super acid in supercritical carbon dioxide was investigated with particular attention paid to the structure of the acceptor substrate. Because of the symmetrical structure and high diffusive property of supercritical carbon dioxide, microwave irradiation did not alter the temperature of the reaction solution, but enhanced reaction yield when aliphatic acceptors are employed. Interestingly, the use of a phenolic acceptor under the same reaction conditions did not show these promoting effects due to microwave irradiation. In the case of aliphatic diol acceptors, the yield seemed to be dependent on the symmetrical properties of the acceptors. The results suggest that microwave irradiation do not affect the reactivity of the donor nor promoter independently. We conclude that the effect of acceptor structure on glycosylation yield is due to electric delocalization of hydroxyl group and dielectrically symmetric structure of whole molecule.

Direct formation of beta-glycosides of N-acetyl glycosamines mediated by rare earth metal triflates

A direct, mild and efficient protocol for the preparation of beta-glycosides of N-acetyl glucosamine (GlcNAc) and N-acetyl galactosamine (GalNAc) has been developed using peracetylated beta-GlcNAc and beta-GalNAc as donors. All rare Earth metal triflate promoters screened were found to promote glycosylation with Sc(OTf)(3) being superior in terms of reaction rate. Simple alcohol glycosylation was found to proceed smoothly in refluxing dichloromethane, whereas higher temperatures under microwave conditions were needed to attain acceptable yields with less reactive, carbohydrate based glycosyl acceptors. The protocol developed was applied to provide the first example of direct chemical formation of a disaccharide using both GlcNAc as a glycosyl donor and acceptor. The alpha-acetate donor was found to be significantly less reactive than the corresponding beta-anomer necessitating higher reaction temperatures under which glycoside anomerisation was found to occur. It was established, that the anomerisation only took place in the presence of both Sc(OTf)(3) and acetic acid.