Differences in reactivity of N-acetyl- and N,N-diacetylsialyl chlorides caused by their different supramolecular organization in solutions

O-Sialylation of a substituted indolin-3-one under phase-transfer catalysis conditions, which does not occur when N-acetylsialyl chloride is used, proceeds with N,N-diacetylsialyl chloride as the glycosyl donor. A study using dynamic light scattering of solutions of both sialyl chlorides under conditions close to the conditions used for glycosylation showed a difference in the correlation radii of light scattering particles in such solutions. This suggests that the introduction of an additional N-acetyl group into the sialyl chloride significantly alters the structure of the supramers of glycosyl donor, which apparently have an increased accessibility of individual molecules for the attack by a nucleophile, which increases its reactivity.