Recent advances in the synthesis of fungal antigenic oligosaccharides

The driving force for the constant improvement and development of new synthetic methodologies in carbohydrate chemistry is a growing demand for biologically important oligosaccharide ligands and neoglycoconjugates thereof for numerous biochemical investigations such as cell-to-pathogen interactions, immune response, cell adhesion, etc. Here we report our syntheses of the spacer-armed antigenic oligosaccharides related to three groups of the polysaccharides of the fungal cell-wall including alpha- and beta-mannan, alpha- and beta-glucan and galactomannan chains, which include new rationally designed synthetic blocks, efficient solutions for the stereoselective construction of glycoside bonds, and novel strategy for preparation of furanoside-containing oligosaccharides based on recently discovered pyranoside-into-furanoside (PIF) rearrangement.