Recent Advances in Transition Metal-Catalyzed Glycosylation

Having access to mild and operationally simple techniques for attaining carbohydrate targets will be necessary to facilitate advancement in biological, medicinal, and pharmacological research. Even with the abundance of elegant reports for generating glycosidic linkages, stereoselective construction of alpha- and beta-oligosaccharides and glycoconjugates is by no means trivial. In an era when expanded awareness of the impact we are having on the environment drives the state-of-the-art, synthetic chemists are tasked with developing cleaner and more efficient reactions for achieving their transformations. This movement imparts the value that prevention of waste is always superior to its treatment or cleanup. This review will highlight recent advancement in this regard by examining strategies that employ transition metal catalysis in the synthesis of oligosaccharides and glycoconjugates. These methods are mild and effective for constructing glycosidic bonds with reduced levels of waste through utilization of substoichiometric amounts of transition metals to promote the glycosylation.