A versatile approach towards multivalent saccharide displays on magnetic nanoparticles and phospholipid vesicles.

A simple synthetic route has been devised for the production of coating agents that can give multivalent displays of saccharides on the surface of magnetite nanoparticles and phospholipid vesicles. A versatile and potentially high-throughput condensation reaction allowed the rapid synthesis of a variety of glycosylhydrazide conjugates with lipid, resorcinol or catechol termini, each in good yield and high anomeric purity. The hydrolytic stability of these adducts was assessed in D2O at different pD values using (1)H-NMR spectroscopy, whilst quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring (QCM-D) confirmed that the saccharide functionality on bilayers and on nanoparticles was still available to lectins.