Multi-component synthesis of peptide-sugar conjugates

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the development of new methods for linking sugars to peptides or proteins because natural glycopeptides or neoglycoconjugates with well defined chemical structures are very important tools to study diverse biological phenomena. Herein we report a novel, one-pot, three-component process for the synthesis of peptide-urea conjugates incorporating a hexafluorovaline or an aspartic acid alkyl ester residue under very mild conditions and high yields. The reaction has been exploited for the synthesis of a wide array of structurally diverse peptide-sugar conjugates through a regiospecific four-component, one-pot sequential domino process, by generating the reacting sugar-carbodiimides in situ from readily accessible starting materials.