Abstract
Glycoscience, despite its myriad of challenges, promises to unravel the causes of, potential new detection methods for, and novel therapeutic strategies against, many disease states. In the last two decades, glyco-gold nanoparticles have emerged as one of several potential new tools for glycoscientists. Glyco-gold nanoparticles consist of the unique structural combination of a gold nanoparticle core and an outer-shell comprising multivalent presentation of carbohydrates. The combination of the distinctive physicochemical properties of the gold core and the biological function/activity of the carbohydrates makes glyco-gold nanoparticles a valuable tool in glycoscience. In this review we present recent advances made in the use of one type of click chemistry, namely the azide–alkyne Huisgen cycloaddition, for the functionalization of gold nanoparticles and their conversion to glyco-gold nanoparticles.
Highlights
Metal nanoparticles (NPs), with their unique physicochemical properties, have drawn significant interest in recent years, and are expected to form the basis of many biological and technological innovations during the remainder of the 21st century [1]
The simplicity and the versatility of the azide–alkyne Huisgen cycloaddition has stimulated several recent attempts to employ this type of reaction for the production of GAuNPs
When the non-catalysed azide–alkyne Huisgen cycloaddition was used for the surface modification of AuNPs, either the yields were poor, or long reaction times or hyperbaric conditions were required
Summary
Metal nanoparticles (NPs), with their unique physicochemical properties, have drawn significant interest in recent years, and are expected to form the basis of many biological and technological innovations during the remainder of the 21st century [1]. Carbohydrates are one of the classes of molecules that are essential for life They are involved in many important biological processes, it is well established that the binding interactions of a particular oligosaccharide, either with another carbohydrate or more commonly with carbohydratebinding proteins (lectins), are generally weak. In order to augment these low affinity interactions, oligosaccharides usually bind lectins in a multivalent cooperative fashion. This avidity is significantly greater than the sum of the individual monomeric carbohydrate–protein interactions, and is sometimes referred to as the ‘cluster glycoside’ effect [6]. In order to study biological processes that involve these types of carbohydrate–protein interactions, it is essential to present carbohydrates in a multivalent fashion. This short review, after giving a brief introduction to general methods for GAuNP synthesis, will focus on both potential advantages and issues of using click chemistry for the functionalization of AuNPs and their conversion to GAuNPs
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