High grade gliomas have been shown to overexpress CD44, a glycoprotein that has been shown to play a role in tumor transformation and metastasis. CD44 binds hyaluronic acid (HA), a non-immunogenic, linear glycosylaminoglycan composed of alternating N-acetyl-D-glucosamine and D-glucuronic acid residues. Our work focuses on studying how different presentations of HA impact the CD44/HA interaction. Our long term goal is to exploit this interaction to deliver diagnostics and therapeutics to high grade gliomas. Since native HA is a large oligosaccharide that is difficult to synthesize, we have focused our initial efforts on the synthesis of HA mimics, which involve presenting HA fragments in a linear fashion on various scaffolds. In this poster, we describe our efforts towards the synthesis HA mimics using two different approaches.

Synthesis of hyaluronic acid mimics for targeting CD44

255th National Meeting (2018)

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