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    Enhanced Concanavalin A Binding to Preorganized Mannose Nanoarrays in Glycodendrimersomes Revealed Multivalent Interactions
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH, 2021) Kostina, Nina Yu; Söder, Dominik; Haraszti, Tamás; Xiao, Qi; Rahimi, Khosrow; Partridge, Benjamin E.; Klein, Michael L.; Percec, Virgil; Rodriguez‐Emmenegger, Cesar
    The effect of the two-dimensional glycan display on glycan-lectin recognition remains poorly understood despite the importance of these interactions in a plethora of cellular processes, in (patho)physiology, as well as its potential for advanced therapeutics. Faced with this challenge we utilized glycodendrimersomes, a type of synthetic vesicles whose membrane mimics the surface of a cell and offers a means to probe the carbohydrate biological activity. These single-component vesicles were formed by the self-assembly of sequence-defined mannose-Janus dendrimers, which serve as surrogates for glycolipids. Using atomic force microscopy and molecular modeling we demonstrated that even mannose, a monosaccharide, was capable of organizing the sugar moieties into periodic nanoarrays without the need of the formation of liquid-ordered phases as assumed necessary for rafts. Kinetics studies of Concanavalin A binding revealed that those nanoarrays resulted in a new effective ligand yielding a ten-fold increase in the kinetic and thermodynamic constant of association. © 2021 The Authors. Angewandte Chemie International Edition published by Wiley-VCH GmbH
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    Screening Libraries of Amphiphilic Janus Dendrimers Based on Natural Phenolic Acids to Discover Monodisperse Unilamellar Dendrimersomes
    (Columbus, Ohio : American Chemical Society, 2019) Buzzacchera, Irene; Xiao, Qi; Han, Hong; Rahimi, Khosrow; Li, Shangda; Kostina, Nina Yu; Toebes, B. Jelle; Wilner, Samantha E.; Möller, Martin; Rodriguez-Emmenegger, Cesar; Baumgart, Tobias; Wilson, Daniela A.; Wilson, Christopher J.; Klein, Michael L.; Percec, Virgil
    Natural, including plant, and synthetic phenolic acids are employed as building blocks for the synthesis of constitutional isomeric libraries of self-assembling dendrons and dendrimers that are the simplest examples of programmed synthetic macromolecules. Amphiphilic Janus dendrimers are synthesized from a diversity of building blocks including natural phenolic acids. They self-assemble in water or buffer into vesicular dendrimersomes employed as biological membrane mimics, hybrid and synthetic cells. These dendrimersomes are predominantly uni- or multilamellar vesicles with size and polydispersity that is predicted by their primary structure. However, in numerous cases, unilamellar dendrimersomes completely free of multilamellar assemblies are desirable. Here, we report the synthesis and structural analysis of a library containing 13 amphiphilic Janus dendrimers containing linear and branched alkyl chains on their hydrophobic part. They were prepared by an optimized iterative modular synthesis starting from natural phenolic acids. Monodisperse dendrimersomes were prepared by injection and giant polydisperse by hydration. Both were structurally characterized to select the molecular design principles that provide unilamellar dendrimersomes in higher yields and shorter reaction times than under previously used reaction conditions. These dendrimersomes are expected to provide important tools for synthetic cell biology, encapsulation, and delivery.