2023/10/13
Keio University
A research group including Kazuki Inaba (third-year student, Doctoral Programs), Yuna Naito (second-year master's student), and Mina Tachibana (first-year master's student) from the Graduate School of Science and Technology, Keio University, along with Professor Kazunobu Toshima and Associate Professor Daisuke Takahashi from the Department of Applied Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Technology at the same university, has successfully developed a new organic chemical method. By focusing on β-arabinofuranosides, a type of five-membered ring sugar found in "glycans" (molecules where monosaccharides are linked in a chain), and using aromatic boronic acid, they have achieved efficient glycosylation with complete stereoselectivity and high regioselectivity.
β-Arabinofuranoside is found in the cell walls of *Mycobacterium tuberculosis* and in plant hormones, and various biological activities have been reported to date. In recent years, glycoproteins extracted from plant pollen have been suggested to have potential for use in allergy prevention, and they are expected to become new candidate compounds for pharmaceuticals that suppress allergic reactions. However, the use of pollen extracts isolated directly from natural sources for pharmaceutical purposes is limited because they are obtained as a mixture of glycoproteins with variable activity and contain toxins derived from endotoxins. Therefore, by using the organic chemical method developed in this study, the efficient synthesis of five-membered ring sugar chains with a single, non-toxic structure becomes possible, which is expected to lead to the development of new anti-allergy drugs.
The results of this research were published online in the German Chemical Society's journal "Angewandte Chemie International Edition" on July 2, 2023, and were also selected for the journal's cover.
Please see below for the full press release.