In situ preactivation strategies for the expeditious synthesis of oligosaccharides: A review.

Carbohydrates have gained increasing appreciation over the last few decades for their fundamental roles in all essential areas of life. As a result, there has been a surge of activity in synthetic glycosylation strategies to construct useful oligosaccharides. This review evaluates the advances in synthetic carbohydrate chemistry, specifically preactivation methodologies, stereoselective β-mannosylations, and an automated, electrochemical preactivation method. Also discussed is the use of preactivation as a tool to study reactive intermediates, and applications of preactivation protocols in the one pot-synthesis of a hyaluronic acid decasaccharide and one-pot synthesis of a tristearoyl lipomannan containing a pseudotrisaccharide.