Synthesis and testing of the first azobenzene mannobioside as photoswitchable ligand for the bacterial lectin FimH

• Vijayanand Chandrasekaran,
• Katharina Kolbe,
• Femke Beiroth and
• Thisbe K. Lindhorst

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2013, 9, 223–233, doi:10.3762/bjoc.9.26

• adhesive surfaces. Keywords: azobenzene glycosides; bacterial adhesion; E/Z photoisomerisation; FimH antagonists; mannobiosides; molecular switches; sweet switches; Introduction Adhesion of bacteria to surfaces can be a severe problem both in vivo and in vitro. Hence, inhibition of bacterial adhesion by

• introduced lately and shown to be of medical relevance as FimH antagonists [6]. Thus, our novel “sweet switches” [15] appear to be highly promising FimH ligands, with the additional feature of a photoswitchable moiety. The biomedicinal potential of azobenzene glycosides seems even higher when their