Potent Fluoro-oligosaccharide Probes of Adhesion in Toxoplasmosis

Chembiochem. 2009 Sep 11. [Epub ahead of print]

Potent Fluoro-oligosaccharide Probes of Adhesion in Toxoplasmosis

Allman SA, Jensen HH, Vijayakrishnan B, Garnett JA, Leon E, Liu Y, Anthony DC, Sibson NR, Feizi T, Matthews S, Davis BG.

Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford, Chemistry Research Laboratory, Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3TA (UK), Fax: (+44) 1865-285-002.

Unnatural, NMR- and MRI-active fluorinated sugar probes, designed and synthesised to bind to the pathogenic protein TgMIC1 from Toxoplasma gondii, were found to display binding potency equal to and above that of the natural ligand. Dissection of the binding mechanism and modes, including the first X-ray crystal structures of a fluoro-oligosaccharide bound to a lectin, demonstrate that it is possible to create effective fluorinated probe ligands for the study of, and perhaps intervention in, sugar-protein binding events.

PMID: 19750531 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]