Carbohydrate-Based Scaffolds in Drug Discovery

Abstract

Carbohydrates have been proven as valuable scaffolds to display pharmocophores and the resulting molecules have demonstrated useful biological activity towards various targets including the somatostatin receptors (SSTR), integrins, HIV-1 protease, matrix metalloproteinases (MMP), multidrug resistance-associated protein (MRP), and as RNA binders. Carbohydrate-based compounds have also shown antibacterial and herbicidal activity.

Scaffold diversity of natural products: inspiration for combinatorial library design

“…[52][53][54] Sugar units are stereodiverse scaffolds adding diversity to the aglycone, which in turn allows for binding to different receptors. [55][56][57] Since we wanted to consider both, the original NPs as well as their underlying aglycones, we implemented a simple SMARTS 58 matching of O-and N-glycosides (furanoses and pyranoses) in MOE (note that this procedure can destroy some molecules). This concept was originally published by researchers from Novartis who used recursive matching of O-glycosides.…”

Too sweet: cheminformatics for deglycosylation in natural products

“…Sugars are also very often found as substituents of small molecules produced by living organisms—for example, deoxyribose, the DNA building block. Furthermore, it is widely accepted [ 1 – 6 ] that sugar moieties are one of the most typical structural characteristics of biological molecules, and in particular of natural products (NPs). The latter are small molecules that have “higher” functions, such as signalling, intercellular and inter-organism communication, or defence.…”

Too sweet: cheminformatics for deglycosylation in natural products

“…Sugars are also very often found as substituents of small molecules produced by living organisms -for example, deoxyribose, the DNA building block. Furthermore, it is widely accepted [1][2][3][4][5][6] that sugar moieties are one of the most typical structural characteristics of biological molecules, and in particular of natural products (NPs). The latter are small molecules that have "higher" functions, such as signalling, intercellular and inter-organism communication, or defence.…”