Disaccharide nucleosides, which are conjugates of a nucleoside and a carbohydrate moiety linked via an O-glycosidic bond, constitute a valuable class of naturally-occurring carbohydrate derivatives1,2,3,4,5,6,7. For instance, they are incorporated in biological macromolecules such as tRNA (transfer ribonucleic acid) and poly(ADP-ribose) (ADP = adenosine diphosphate), as well as in some antibacterial agents and other biologically-active substances (e.g., adenophostins, amicetins, ezomycin)5,6,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19. Hence, disaccharide nucleosides and their derivatives are expected to be lead compounds for drug discovery research. The methodologies for the synthesis of disaccharide nucleosides are classified into three categories; enzymatic O-glycosylation20,21, chemical N-glycosylation5,9,16,22,23,24, and chemical O-glycosylation7,9,14,16,18,19,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37. In particular, chemical O-glycosylation would be an efficient method for the stereoselective synthesis and large-scale synthesis of disaccharide nucleosides. Previous research has shown that the O-glycosylation of 2'-deoxyribonucleoside 2 with the thioglycosyl donor 1, using the combination of p-toluenesulfenyl chloride and silver triflate, affords the desired disaccharide nucleoside 3 (Figure 1A; Ar = aryl and PG = protecting group)38.
Following these results, we decided to develop the O-glycosylation of ribonucleosides applying the p-toluenesulfenyl chloride/silver triflate promoter system. While several examples of the O-glycosylation of partially protected ribonucleosides have been demonstrated7,9,14,16,18,19,24,32,33,34,35,36,37, the use of unprotected or temporarily-protected ribonucleosides as a glycosyl acceptor for O-glycosylation has been negligibly reported. Therefore, the development of regioselective O-glycosylation of unprotected or temporarily-protected ribonucleosides would provide a more beneficial synthetic method without protecting group manipulations of ribonucleosides. In order to achieve the regioselective O-glycosylation of ribonucleosides, we focused on the boron compounds, because several examples of regio- and/or stereoselective acylation, alkylation, silylation, and glycosylation of carbohydrate derivatives assisted by boronic or borinic acid have been reported39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50. In this article, we demonstrate the procedure for the synthesis of disaccharide nucleosides utilizing regioselective O-glycosylation at the 5'-hydroxyl group of ribonucleosides via a boronic ester intermediate. In the strategy presented here, boronic ester intermediate 6 would be afforded by the esterification of the ribonucleoside 4 with the boronic acid 5, which allows the regioselective O-glycosylation at the 5'-hydroxyl group with thioglycosyl donor 7 to give the disaccharide nucleoside 8 (Figure 1B)51. We also studied the interaction of a ribonucleoside and boronic acid by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, to observe the formation of a boronic ester. Esterification to make a boronic ester and a glycosylation reaction require anhydrous conditions to prevent the hydrolysis of the boronic ester and the glycosyl donor. In this article, we demonstrate the typical procedures to obtain the anhydrous conditions for successful glycosylation reactions for researchers and students not only in chemistry but also in other research fields.