Multivalent Inhibitors for Carbohydrate-Processing Enzymes: Beyond the Lock-and-Key Concept

During the last decades, tremendous chemical efforts have been dedicated to design monovalent inhibitors of carbohydrate-processing enzymes, with comparatively few rewards in terms of marketed drugs. Recently, an alter-native to the traditional lock and key approach has emerged. Multivalency, a widely used strategy for lectin inhibition, has been successfully applied to specific glycosidases and glycosyltransferases.