Division/Committee: [CARB] Division of Carbohydrate Chemistry & Chemical Glycobiology

The National Research Council (NRC)’s report in 2012 recognized the central importance of carbohydrates to the glycosciences. They stressed the need for the rapid development of improved, more reproducible and more broadly applicable synthetic carbohydrate technologies, to facilitate the comprehensive synthesis of biomedically relevant glycan libraries (at reasonable cost) for tool development, and for research applications by non-specialists. This critical report lead to the creation of the NIH Glycoscience Common Fund (Glycoscience (nih.gov)) program. The program competed three calls for applications and funded 18 synthetic proposals directed at the development of reliable, reproducible carbohydrate technologies with the potential for automation/facilitating automation. This symposium will highlight discoveries made over the course of this program, and illustrate how new synthetic chemistry is critical for moving the field of Glycoscience forward towards new therapeutics. This symposium will provide a unique opportunity for synthetic chemists to consider & discuss the next generation of synthetic methods development needed to move the field of Glycoscience forward.