Synthetic glycopolymers: Some recent developments

Abstract

Glycopolymers are synthetic macromolecules containing sugar moieties. They have shown promise in biorelated applications and the number of synthetic approaches for making these molecules is expanding rapidly. This field benefits from the rapid development of synthetic polymer chemistry, which has seen dramatic progress in the synthesis of functional glycopolymers. Strategies employed in glycopolymer synthesis have been generally carried out as either direct polymerization of glycomonomers or post-glycosylation of pre-formed polymers. This contribution is a short overview of some of the recent developments and will hopefully direct the reader to many papers of interest. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.