Biologia Celular: Pesquisa e Terapia

Pharmaceutical Oligosaccharide sensing by a chemical approach

Gaku Fukuhara

Selective sensing of oligosaccharides in aqueous media is a challenge in current chemistry due to their heavy hydration and stereochemical diversity.  us, the develop¬ment of selective saccharide sensor that functions in aqueous media is of particular signi­ cance and bene­ t not only from the scienti­ c but also from the application point of view. In this study, we synthesized reporter-modi­ ed curdlan (DABz-Cur) as a saccharide chemosensor, and investi¬gated its abilities for sensing a variety of oligosaccharides by using circular dichroism spectroscopy to ­ nd a speci­ cally high sensitivity for one of tetrasaccharides, i.e. acarbose shown in Figure 1a. Acarbose is a drug to treat type-2 diabetes mellitus and obesity by inhibiting α-glucosidase that releases glucose from higher carbohydrates, and therefore its detection is of particular signi­ cance from the diagnostic viewpoint.  e saccharide sensing results of further interesting approach by an in situ hybrid sensor with Cur and PyPT in Figure 1b and their detailed supramolecular complexation will be discussed.