A group of heterocyclic boronic acids demonstrating unusually high affinity and selectivity for sialic acids are described, with strong interactions under the weakly acidic pH conditions associated with a hypoxic tumoral microenvironment.

A hierarchical bottom-up route exploiting reversible covalent interactions with boronic acids and so-called click chemistry for selective glycoprotein detection is described. The self-assembled and imprinted surfaces confer high binding affinities, nanomolar sensitivity, exceptional glycoprotein specificity and selectivity.

Saccharides - a versatile class of biologically important molecules - are involved in a variety of physiological and pathological processes, but their detection and quantification is challenging. Herein, surface plasmon resonance and self-assembled monolayers on gold generated from bis-boronic acid bearing a thioctic acid moiety, whose intramolecular distance between the boronic acid moieties is well defined, are shown to detect d-glucose with high selectivity, demonstrating a higher affinity than other saccharides probed, namely d-galactose, d-fructose and d-mannose.

Reported herein is a switchable surface that relies on electrically-induced conformational changes within surface-grafted arginine–glycine–aspartate (RGD) oligopeptides as the means of modulating cell adhesion.

Gold surfaces were molecularly tailored with a saccharide binding motif capable of covalently adhering cells. This facilitated communication via the macrophage membrane with implications for understanding mammalian cell signalling.