Asymmetric Total Synthesis of the Glycosidase Inhibitor, 1,4-dideoxy-l,4-imino-D-arabinitol(DAB1)

Naturally occurring sugar mimics with a nitrogen in the ring are classified into five structural classes: polyhydroxylated pyrrolidines, piperidines, indolizidines. pyrrolizidine, and nortropanes. Glycosidase are involved in a wide range of important biological processes, such as intestinal digestion, post-translational processing of glycoproteins and the lysosomal catabolism of glycoconjugate. The realization that alkaloidal sugar mimics might have enormous therapeutic potential in many diseases such as viral infection, cancer and diabetes has led to increasing interest and demand for these compounds. Most of these effects can be shown to result from the direct or indrect inhibition of glycosidases.