Carbohydrates Commons^™

Towards Developing Glut2 Specific Probes For Biochemical And Biomedical Applications, Abdelrahman Ismail

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Facilitated Glucose transporters (GLUTs) are membrane proteins responsible for the uptake of simple sugars and other structurally similar metabolites in all mammalian cells. One of the hallmarks of cancer is dysfunctional sugar metabolism, known as the Warburg effect, and one of the manifestations of that effect is abnormal GLUT expression. There are 14 known GLUT proteins with different expression patterns in different tissues, and tumors tend to express certain GLUTs that are not present in surrounding healthy tissue. Therefore, selective targeting of GLUTs presents a potentially powerful tool for diagnostics and treatment of cancer and other diseases. This has been …

Anatomy And Physiology Preparatory Course Textbook (2nd Edition), Carlos Liachovitzky

Open Educational Resources

The goal of this preparatory textbook is to give students a chance to become familiar with some terms and some basic concepts they will find later on in the Anatomy and Physiology course, especially during the first few weeks of the course.

Organization and functioning of the human organism are generally presented starting from the simplest building blocks, and then moving into levels of increasing complexity. This textbook follows the same presentation. It begins introducing the concept of homeostasis, then covers the chemical level, and later on a basic introduction to cellular level, organ level, and organ system level. This …

Synthesis Of Glycopharmaceuticals For The Treatment Of Microbial Sepsis, Nicholas Forsythe, Alexei Demchenko, Catherine Alex

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Carbohydrates (glycans) form the basis of all living organisms and, consequently, are ubiquitous both in nature as biologically active compounds and in medicine as pharmaceuticals. One important application of carbohydrate-based drugs (glycopharmaceuticals) is the treatment of microbial sepsis, an acute illness that causes 100,000+ human deaths annually in the US alone. Exposure of the patient’s blood system to E. coli bacteria causes a massive, and often fatal, immune response. One important cellular receptor that senses the bacterium and is critically involved in triggering the immune response is CD14. Significant efforts by our team and others have been made to develop …

Silver Salt-Mediate Benzylation Of Carbohydrates Under Mildly Acidic Conditions, Nicholas Forsythe, Samira Escopy, Yashapal Singh 2436808, Alexei Demchenko

Undergraduate Research Symposium

When looking at biomolecules, carbohydrate represent a large group of macromolecules that play an important role in the body. Most importantly, carbohydrates provide an energy supply for organisms, but it is proven that they are also involved in a myriad of other processes. Furthermore, synthesizing these molecules leads to advancements in chemistry, such as drug design, and other structures such as glycolipids play important roles in the immune system. Understanding this, an efficient and reliable way to create these carbohydrates is needed.

The protection and deprotection manipulations of carbohydrates play an essential role in synthetic carbohydrate chemistry.¹ Using benzyl …

Glycosaminoglycan Mimetics For The Treatment Of Cancer And Lung Inflammation, Shravan Morla

Theses and Dissertations

Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) are linear polysaccharides whose disaccharide building blocks consist of an amino sugar and either uronic acid or galactose. They are expressed on virtually all mammalian cells, usually covalently attached to proteins, forming proteoglycans. GAGs are highly negatively charged due to an abundance of sulfate and carboxylic acid groups, and are structurally very diverse, with differences arising from chain length, the type of monomeric units, the linkages between each monomeric unit, the position of sulfate groups, and the degree of sulfation. GAGs are known to interact with a multitude of proteins, impacting diverse physiological and pathological processes. In addition, …

Synthesis And Evaluation Of A Novel Carbohydrate Template And Analogs Thereof For Potential Cns-Active Drugs, Emi Hanawa-Romero

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Central nervous system (CNS) disorders are becoming a major societal problem. Examples of well-known CNS disorders are: neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's, Huntington's and Alzheimer’s diseases, epilepsy/seizures, addiction, bipolar disorder, catalepsy, meningitis, migraines, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and multiple sclerosis. CNS disorders can be caused by various factors and therefore can affect ages, genders and races of all.

The population of patients with CNS disorders is increasing and a significant percentage of patients have symptoms that are not controlled by existing treatments. In addition, since CNS disorders are chronic disorder, there is no cure and thus the patients have to …

Diversity Oriented Synthesis, Characterization And Anti-Cancer Activity Of Killer Peptide Nucleolipid Bioconjugates, Niki K. Rana

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The killer peptide sequence D-(KLAKLAK)₂ has been originally designed and developed as an antibacterial agent. Despite having excellent cytotoxicity towards bacteria, this sequence maintains low cell cytotoxity in malignant mammalian cell types such as cancer. The chemical basis for its selectivity has been attributed to its poly(cationic) amphiphilic nature, which facilitates cell permeability across the negatively charged bacterial membrane, but with limited permeability across the zwitterionic membrane of mammalian cells. The positively charged D-(KLAKLAK)₂ sequence has been found to accumulate on the surface of the mitochondria causing dissipation of the negatively charged mitochondrial membrane potential. This charge disruption …

Probing Allosteric, Partial Inhibition Of Thrombin Using Novel Anticoagulants, Stephen S. Verespy Iii

Theses and Dissertations

Thrombin is the key protease that regulates hemostasis; the delicate balance between procoagulation and anticoagulation of blood. In clotting disorders, like deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism, procoagulation is up-regulated, but propagation of clotting can be inhibited with drugs targeting the proteases involved, like thrombin. Such drugs however, have serious side effects (e.g., excessive bleeding) and some require monitoring during the course of treatment. The reason for these side effects is the mechanism by which the drugs’ act. The two major mechanisms are direct orthosteric and indirect allosteric inhibition, which will completely abolish the protease’s activity. Herein we sought an …

Chemoenzymatic Studies To Enhance The Chemical Space Of Natural Products, Jhong-Min Chen

Theses and Dissertations--Pharmacy

Natural products provide some of the most potent anticancer agents and offer a template for new drug design or improvement with the advantage of an enormous chemical space. The overall goal of this thesis research is to enhance the chemical space of two natural products in order to generate novel drugs with better in vivo bioactivities than the original natural products.

Polycarcin V (PV) is a gilvocarcin-type antitumor agent with similar structure and comparable bioactivity with the principle compound of this group, gilvocarcin V (GV). Modest modifications of the polyketide-derived tetracyclic core of GV had been accomplished, but the most …

Human Anatomy And Physiology Preparatory Course (1st Edition), Carlos Liachovitzky

Open Educational Resources

The overall purpose of this preparatory course textbook is to help students familiarize with some terms and some basic concepts they will find later in the Human Anatomy and Physiology I course.

The organization and functioning of the human organism generally is discussed in terms of different levels of increasing complexity, from the smallest building blocks to the entire body. This Anatomy and Physiology preparatory course covers the foundations on the chemical level, and a basic introduction to cellular level, organ level, and organ system levels. There is also an introduction to homeostasis at the beginning.

Synthesis Of The Disaccharide Αgal(1,4)Βgal Related To Trypanosoma Cruzi And Its Conjugation To A Protein, Erika Y. Monroy, Igor C. Almeida, Katja Michael*

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

The disaccharide αGal(1,4)βGal was synthesized by Schmidt’s trichloroacetimidate method. α-Stereoselectivity was achieved by the sterically demanding 4,6-di-tert-butyl-silylidene protecting group in the glycosyl donor. The disaccharide was equipped with an allyl group that allowed for the installation of a thiol functionality, which was used for conjugation to the maleimide-derivatized carrier protein keyhole limpet hemocyanin (KLH). Among other oligosaccharides with terminal a-galactosyl moieties this disaccharide could potentially exist on the cell surface of the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi), which is the causative agent of Chagas disease. As of today no effective vaccine has been developed for Chagas disease. The …