Sintesi di glicopeptidi mediante le reazioni tiol-ene/ino e studio della reattività di Umpolung di α-dichetoni

It is well established that protein glycosylation, a bioorthogonal process, is a posttranslational modification that profoundly affects protein folding, stability, immunogenicity, and biological properties and activities. In this regard, while native O- and N-glycosidic bonds of glycopeptides are prone to hydrolytic cleavage by O- and N-glycosidases, synthetic C- and S-analogs are expected to be stable toward such enzymatic degradation. Therefore, much effort has been devoted in the last decades to synthesizing C- and S-glycosyl amino acids and their assembly in glycopeptides. They with these non-native linkages can be used as probes for biochemical studies and leads in drug discovery, such as, for example, vaccines. In the first part of this thesis project we developed two routes to synthesis of S-glycopeptides. One route consists of S-glycosyl amino acid synthesis from photoinduced addition of sugar thiols to alkenyl glycine (TEC) followed by incorporation of this amino acid into a peptide. The second route, that is, specific for a cysteine containing peptide such as glutathione, involves peptide S-homoallylation followed by TEC with sugar thiol. We also demonstrated the selective propargylation of cysteine-containing peptides followed by photoinduced thiol-yne coupling with glycosyl thiols as an effective one-pot two-step platform for the dual glycosylation of peptides. By this strategy, we also performed the sequential glycosylation and biotinylation of peptides. In recent years, N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) have attracted considerable interest due to their unique features, which allow them to be used as ligands for organometallic catalysis, reagents in the synthesis of heterocycles, and efficient organocatalysts in umpolung transformations. In the latter sub-area of research many efforts have been devoted to the realization of highly stereoselective versions of the classical benzoin and Stetter reactions through optimal pre-catalyst design, to the discovery of new transformations, and to the umpolung of electrophiles alternative to aldehydes and pyruvates, mainly acylsilanes and Michael acceptors. In this thesis, our group has recently demonstrated the capability of linear and cyclic dialkyl α-diketones to undergo polarity reversal under thiazolium carbene catalysis in benzoin-type and Stetter reactions, and thus act as a novel class of acyl anion precursors. Contrarily, it has been observed that diaryl α-diketones do not undergo polarity reversal in the presence of (benzo)thiazolium carbenes but are engaged in a novel multicomponent reaction with water to efficiently give medicinally relevant 1,4-thiazin-3-one heterocycles. The umpolung reactivity of diaryl 1,2-diones, however, can be effectively triggered by different NHCs.