“…Chemical synthesis to attain these highly polar, fragile, and complex steroid glycosides poses also a formidable challenge; 3,4 to the best of our knowledge, none of the starfish polyhydroxysteroid glycosides has ever been synthesized to date. 4,5 We envisioned the assembly of linckoside A/B from four pieces (Figure 1), including a polyhydroxysteroid C22 aldehyde (e.g., 3), a side chain derivative (e.g., 4), a 2-O-methyl-Dxylopyranosyl donor (e.g., 5), and an L-arabinofuranosyl/Dxylopyranosyl donor (e.g., 6/7). The polyhydroxysteroid aldehyde (3) could be elaborated from the easily accessible vespertilin acetate 8 6 by exploiting the inherent functional groups at C3, C5/6, C16, and C22.…”