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In view of the significance of oligosaccharides in biological processes and the distinct disadvantage of easy metabolic degradation by glycosidases, a synthetic effort to prepare oligosaccharide mimics with enhanced metabolic stability was undertaken. This thesis introduces a new methodology for a high-yielding synthesis of mono- or oligosaccharidic glycals under non-solvolytic conditions. Lewis acid promoted glycal dimerization followed by introduction of a glycosyl cyanide functionality converted the compounds into possible anchors for pharmacophores. The experiments are discussed with respect to general applicability of the synthetic methods, stereoselectivity, and the biological properties of the compounds.

No description available.

Les virus influenza provoquent chaque année la grippe saisonnière qui peut toucher 5 à 15 % de la population. Les médicaments antiviraux sont un moyen important complémentaire à la vaccination pour le traitement et la prévention de la grippe. Actuellement, deux classes d’antiviraux ont été approuvées, l'une pour inhiber l'étape de décapsidation (l’inhibiteur du canal ionique M2), et l'autre pour empêcher la libération de néo-virions (l’inhibiteur de la neuraminidase). Cependant, de plus en plus de virus sont nativement résistants aux inhibiteurs de la protéine M2. Des virus résistants aux inhibiteurs de la neuraminidase ont également circulé durant les hivers 2008 – 2009. Le développement de nouveaux médicaments afin de substituer ou de compléter ces inhibiteurs est donc crucial dans la lutte contre les virus de la grippe. L’accent mis ces dernières années sur l’activité biologique des sucres (oligosaccharides/polysaccharides) montre une voie pour l’étude de l’activité antivirale d’une des plus importantes biosources. Dans le but d'évaluer le potentiel antigrippal des molécules dérivées de sucres, nous avons effectué un criblage à partir d'une bibliothèque de 245 composés de polysaccharides et d'oligosaccharides, dont la plupart proviennent d’algues et de végétaux supérieurs. Plusieurs molécules actives réparties dans différentes familles de sucres ont été mises en évidence. Parmi les candidats d'intérêt, l’oligosaccharide sulfaté 152, appartenant à la famille des arabinogalactanes de l'espèce Codium fragile, a présenté une activité inhibitrice vis-à-vis des deux virus influenza de type A et de type B in vitro. Le mécanisme d’action de cet oligosaccharide a été caractérisé. Il montre que les deux glycoprotéines de surface, l’hémagglutinine et la neuraminidase, sont les cibles virales de cette molécule / The annual seasonal flu caused by influenza viruses can affect 5 to 15 % of the population. In addition to vaccination, the use of antiviral drugs in the treatment and prevention allows the control of influenza virus infection. So far, two classes of antiviral drugs have been approved for influenza treatment, one to inhibit the uncoating step (M2 inhibitors), and the other to prevent the release of progeny virions (NA inhibitors). However, the emergence and circulation of M2 inhibitor resistant viruses at high frequencies have restricted the use of these inhibitors. Neuraminidase inhibitor resistance among circulating influenza viruses has emerged since the 2008 – 2009 season. The development of new classes of antiviral agents is crucial in the fight against influenza virus. In recent years, many molecules belonging to a large group of compounds known as carbohydrates (oligosaccharides/polysaccharides) have been revealed essential for various biological activities. The establishment of carbohydrate-based antiviral agents is, therefore, a highly promising strategy. In order to evaluate the potentially anti-influenza molecules derived from carbohydrates, we have performed a screening from a library of 245 polysaccharides and oligosaccharides. These compounds were extracted mainly from plants and algae. Several active molecules of different families have been identified. Among them, the sulphated oligosaccharide 152, belonging to the family of arabinogalactane, was found to be highly active toward both influenza virus A and B in vitro. This oligosaccharide was purified from the green algal species Codium fragile. The study of the 152 mechanism suggests that this oligosaccharide can cooperatively inhibit both viral HA binding activity and NA catalytic activity

Oligosaccharides are important biomolecules that are targets and also components of many medical treatments, including treatments for cancer, HIV, and inflammation. While the demand for medically-relevant oligosaccharides is increasing, these compounds have proven difficult to synthesize. Whole-cell oligosaccharide synthesis is a promising method that requires relatively inexpensive substrates and can complete the synthesis in just one step. However, whole-cell oligosaccharide synthesis employing common microorganisms like E. coli have been plagued by low yields. This dissertation investigates an alternative microorganism for oligosaccharide production: Agrobacterium sp. ATCC 31749. This Agrobacterium strain produces high levels of curdlan polysaccharide, demonstrating its natural ability to produce the sugar nucleotide precursor for oligosaccharide production. The two main objectives of this dissertation are 1) to develop biocatalysts for oligosaccharide synthesis by engineering ATCC 31749 and 2) to determine what factors affect poly- and oligosaccharide production in this Agrobacterium strain. ATCC 31749 was engineered to produce two oligosaccharides of medical importance: N-acetyllactosamine and galactose-α 1,3-lactose. Oligosaccharide production in the biocatalyst was further improved with additional metabolic engineering. Substrate uptake was increased through expression of a lactose permease, and availability of the sugar nucleotide substrate improved with gene knockout of the curdlan synthase gene. Both of these engineering efforts led to increased oligosaccharide synthesis in the Agrobacterium biocatalyst. Overall, the engineered Agrobacterium strains synthesized gram-scale quantities of the oligosaccharide products in just one step and requiring only a few inexpensive substrates and cofactors. Additional improvement of the oligosaccharide-producing biocatalysts required further investigation of the factors influencing poly- and oligosaccharide production in ATCC 31749. In this dissertation, several environmental and intracellular factors are identified that affect both oligosaccharide and curdlan production. Sucrose was the preferred carbon source for oligosaccharide synthesis, and the addition of citrate to the synthesis reaction led to significant improvement in oligosaccharide production. To identify the genetic factors and possible mechanisms regulating curdlan production, the genome of ATCC 31749 was sequenced. The genome sequence was utilized for transcriptome analysis of ATCC 31749. In the transcriptome analysis, genes significantly up- and down-regulated during curdlan production were identified. Subsequent gene knockout experiments showed several factors to be important for curdlan synthesis, namely the nitrogen signaling cascade, polyphosphate, and the GTP-derived second messengers (p)ppGpp and c-di-GMP. In addition to the development of biocatalysts for oligosaccharide production, this investigation provides insight into the complex mechanisms regulating exopolysaccharide synthesis.

Des techniques de séquençage existent pour les biopolymères comme les protéines et l'ADN et ont permis de révolutionner la biologie moderne. Toutefois, des techniques similaires dédiées au séquençage des carbohydrates n'ont pas encore été développées à cause de la complexité de cette classe de biomolécules. Dans ce contexte, nous avons construit un instrument couplant spectroscopie vibrationnelle et spectrométrie de masse (MS/IR) afin de caractériser la structure des carbohydrates grâce à leur signature infrarouge.Dans cette thèse, nous avons démontré que cette métrique permet de différencier les différentes isoméries présentes dans la classe des carbohydrates : la nature des monosaccharides, la position des modifications fonctionnelles ainsi que la régio- et la stéréochimie de la liaison glycosidique. Ensuite la conservation de la structure moléculaire des ions après fragmentation a été démontrée sur des fragments de disaccharides permettant ainsi d'établir les règles du séquençage de carbohydrates par MS/IR. Cette méthode a ensuite été appliquée sur différents oligosaccharides.Enfin dans la dernière partie de ce manuscrit, le potentiel de la spectroscopie IRMPD dans l'infrarouge lointain est exploré pour la résolution des anomères, des isomères et des conformations. Finalement deux approches permettant une séparation en masse et en isomère en amont de l'analyse spectroscopique sont proposées : spectroscopie IRMPD 2 couleurs ou couplage avec la chromatographie liquide / Sequencing techniques have been established for proteins and DNA and have revolutionised modern biology but similar technique do not exist for carbohydrates due to their unique complexity. In this context, we have built an instrument coupling vibrational spectroscopy and mass spectrometry (MS/IR) dedicated to the structural characterization of carbohydrates.In this thesis, we have shown that the IR signature is a powerful metric which is able to resolve simultaneously all carbohydrate isomerisms: the monosaccharide content, the position of functional modifications, the regiochemistry and the stereochemistry of the glycosidic linkage. Then the conservation of the molecular structure of MS fragments has been revealed on disaccharide fragments. Following this demonstration we have established the carbohydrate sequencing rules using MS/IR and applied them for the determination of the sequence of different oligosaccharides.Finally the potential of the IRMPD spectroscopy in the Far-IR range is explored for anomers, isomers and conformations resolution as well as the utilisation of a two colors infrared spectroscopy or the coupling with an HPLC instrument

Avec 800 000 morts par année, les maladies diarrhéiques sont la seconde cause de mortalité chez les enfants de moins de cinq ans. La shigellose, causée par des bactéries Gram négatif appelées Shigella, est l’une des quatre grandes maladies entériques touchant cette population. L’infection naturelle protège contre la réinfection et la composante polysaccharidique du lipopolysaccharide bactérien est la principale cible de l’immunité humorale. Chez S. sonnei, espèce prévalente dans les pays en développement et développés, ce polysaccharide spécifique, à caractère zwitterionique, a pour unité répétitive un disaccharide composé de deux hexosamines rares : l’acide 2-acétamido-2-désoxy-L-altruronique (A) et le 2-acétamido-4-amino-2,4,6-tridésoxy-D-galactose (B, aussi appelé AAT) associés par des liens glycosidiques 1,2-trans (I). ->4-a-L-AltpNAcA-(1->3)-b-D-FucpNAc4N-(1-> (I). Ces travaux s’intègrent dans un programme visant le développement d’un vaccin issu de sucres de synthèse à couverture large contre les infections par Shigella. Le premier objectif de la stratégie développée contre les infections par S. sonnei est l’identification des épitopes saccharidiques, cibles des anticorps protecteurs. Dans ce but, nous avons entrepris la synthèse d’une diversité de fragments du polysaccharide d’intérêt. Des synthèses multi-grammes de précurseurs orthogonalement protégés des monosaccharides A et B ont été mises au point afin d’accéder aux intermédiaires donneurs et accepteurs impliqués dans les étapes de glycosylation. En particulier, deux voies originales d’accès au précurseur B ont été développées. D’autre part, l’optimisation des conditions de glycosylation et d’oxydation a conduit à un bloc disaccharidique AB compatible avec la synthèse d’oligosaccharides d’ordres supérieurs. Les synthons mono- et disaccharidiques identifiés ont été validés à travers l’obtention de quatre disaccharides portant ou non des modifications de la répartition des charges, de deux trisaccharides ainsi que d’un tétrasaccharide. / 800,000 children die each year of diarrhoeal diseases, making it the second cause of death among children under five. Shigellosis, caused by a Gram negative bacterium, Shigella, is one of the four major forms of diarrhoeal diseases in this population. Natural infection protects against reinfection and the humoral response is primarily directed against the specific polysaccharide moiety of the bacterial lipopolysaccharide. S. sonnei, the prevalent species in developed and transitional countries, displays a zwitterionic polysaccharide, whose disaccharide repeating unit is made of two rare aminosugars: a 2-acetamido-2-deoxy-L-altruronic acid (A) and a 2-acetamido-4-amino-2,4,6-trideoxy-D-galactose (B, AAT) 1,2-trans linked to one another (I). ->4-a-L-AltpNAcA-(1->3)-b-D-FucpNAc4N-(1-> (I). This work is part of the program aimed at the development of a synthetic carbohydrate-based broad coverage vaccine against Shigella infections. In order to define the protective epitopes located on the O-specific polysaccharide of S. sonnei, we tackled the synthesis of fragments thereof. First, multigram-scale syntheses of orthogonally protected precursors to residues A and B were undertaken to access donor and acceptor intermediates in the glycosylation reactions. In particular, two original routes to precursors of residue B were developed. Careful optimisation of the glycosylation and oxidation reaction conditions gave the disaccharide building block AB equipped for the synthesis of chain extension at both ends. Selected mono- and disaccharide building blocks were validated by the synthesis of four disaccharides, bearing modification of the charge pattern or not, two trisaccharides and a tetrasaccharide.

Eleven tested anions were able to form adducts with neutral oligosaccharides at low cone voltage in negative ion mode electrospray mass spectrometry. Among them, fluoride and acetate have the abilities to significantly enhance the absolute abundance of [M-H]- for neutral oliogosaccharides. The chloride adduct has the best stability among all the adduct species investigated. For the above three anions, CID of adduct species may be used for structural determination of neutral oligosaccharides. In the presence of F- and Ac-, simultaneous detection of acidic oligosaccharides and neutral oligosaccharides was achieved. The ratio of Cl- : non-Cl-containing product ions obtained in CID spectra of chloride adducts of disaccharides was used to differentiate anomeric configurations of disaccharides. Density functional theory (DFT) was employed to evaluate the optimized structures of chloride adducts of disaccharides. The formation and decomposition of chloride adducts with oligosaccharides of different acidities were investigated in MALDI mass spectrometry.

Heparan sulfate (HS) is a cell-surface sulfated polysaccharide that binds to multiple proteins and has been implicated in cancer, viral infection and Alzheimer's disease. Due to the heterogeneity of HS, the structural requirements for protein binding are ill- defined. Chemical synthesis of structurally-defined HS oligosaccharides, which are tunable in terms of length, order of monosaccharides and sulfation pattern, is required for the investigation of HS-protein binding. Single molecule methods have been utilised in biophysics to study dynamic processes and can allow observation of rare events which would be 'averaged out' in ensemble measurements. Access to fluorescently labelled HS oligosaccharides should allow investigation of interactions with proteins at the single molecule level using methods such as single molecule FRET, providing a method complementary to NMR studies (ensemble) and X-ray crystallography (non-dynamic).This thesis presents the development of a method for the fluorescent labelling of a chemically synthesised HS disaccharide utilising a reducing-end amine tag. Analysis of the fluorescence properties of the labelled disaccharide at ensemble and single molecule level indicated no perturbation of the fluorophore when attached to the sugar. Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy measurements of the fluorescent HS disaccharide with the protein FGF-1 showed no binding, which is attributed to the low concentration (1 nM) of disaccharide required in the experiment. Additional work is presented in this thesis on the development of a method for atom-specific 13C labelling of HS oligosaccharides, which has been initiated by synthesis of a 13C labelled L-iduronate monosaccharide and a 13C labelled disaccharide. New strategies for the synthesis of HS oligosaccharides based on orthogonal thioglycoside-based glycosylations employing S-benzoxazolyl and S-thiazolyl donors have been investigated. Development of a chemoselective glycosylation strategy for HS oligosaccharide synthesis utilising a 'super-disarmed' [2.2.2] L-iduronic lactone is presented.

<p>Heparan sulfates (HSs) are a class of anionic carbohydrate chains found at cell surfaces and in the extracellular matrix where they interact with a number of proteins. HS is characterized by extreme structural heterogeneity, and has been implicated in a number of biological phenomenon like embryogenesis, morphogen gradient formation and signalling of growth factors such as FGF, PDGF etc. Despite the characteristic structural heterogeneity, evidence from compositional studies show that the HS structure is expressed in a tightly regulated manner, implying a functional significance, which is most likely in the modulation of cell behaviour through HS-protein interactions. The lack of molecular tools has, however, hampered the understanding of HS structures with functional significance. This work therefore aims at characterizing the structural requirements on HS involved in the interaction with the anti-HS phage display antibodies HS4C3, AO4B08 and HS4E4 and a selected growth factor PDGF-BB. The characterization was done with the help of tailored oligosaccharide libraries generated from sources bearing structural resemblance to HS.</p><p>The work has thus made available tools that preferentially recognize certain structural features on the HS chain and will aid in the further study of HS structure and its regulation. Evidence is also provided to support the notion that HS protein interactions can occur in multiple manners, utilizing any of the structural features on the HS chain.</p>