In this project funded by the Chemical Synthesis Program of the Chemistry Division, Professor Alexei Demchenko of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Missouri-St. Louis will develop effective approaches to stereocontrolled chemical glycosylation. This will be achieved by developing a reliable toolkit for studying the reaction pathways by which thioglycosides, glycosyl bromides, and the sulfonium salt intermediates form, isomerize and react. Successful completion of the proposed research lies in the project's contributions to basic and applied sciences developed at the interface of modern synthetic and mechanistic carbohydrate chemistries.
The broader impacts (and the key for success) of this program is the participation of undergraduate and graduate students, who will receive solid training in the research methods and achieve all key milestones in this project. The University of Missouri-St. Louis and the Demchenko laboratory are well positioned and strongly committed to broaden participation of research students from underrepresented groups, advance discovery of new reactions while promoting teaching, training and learning, and benefit society by developing stereocontrolled reactions for the synthesis of glycosidic linkages by means of which the most common organic molecules and many therapeutic agents connect.
