WHAT: Automated Oligosaccharide Synthesizer
WHERE: MIT, with the Mizutani Foundation for Glycoscience, the American Chemical Society, and Merck
WHO: Seeberger Lab, Department of Chemistry, MIT
WHY: To rapidly produce oligosaccharides - complex carbohydrates that serve as intermediaries in the body's cell-to-cell communication. The sugars' 3-D structure makes them difficult to synthesize, limiting supplies and hindering research on their role in the pathology of cancer, AIDS, and other diseases. This fall, Advanced Carbohydrate Technologies will begin selling synthetic oligosaccharides - and maybe AOS machines - to support in-depth studies.
HOW: Working incrementally, the synthesizer removes a manufactured monomer from its cartridge, which holds the chemical compound in powder form. A syringe mixes the monomer with a dichloromethane solvent and releases the resulting liquid into a reaction chamber, where the oligosaccharide is assembled. A reagent, TMSOTf, activates the monomer, which then bonds to the growing carbo-chain. Using this method, the prototype machine, an off-the-shelf peptide synthesizer that was modified by the Seeberger team, can produce a polymer composed of 12 monosaccharides in about 18 hours - almost a hundred times faster than other methods.
