General strategies for the synthesis of iminosugars and new approaches towards iminosugar libraries

This chapter will provide an up-to-date review of synthetic methods for the preparation of iminosugars and related compounds. Iminosugars are still the object of intense synthetic investigations, both for the improvement of the synthetic methods and for the preparation of novel structures. Strategies from both sugars and non-carbohydrate precursors can provide efficient approaches to single structures and/or to libraries of such compounds The syntheses of a variety of innovative structures, such as 1-N-iminosugars, isourea-type iminosugars, spirocyclopropyl and azaazulenes byciclic compounds, will be reported. Finally the synthesis of glycoconjugate-related iminosugars, where the "pseudoanomeric" center is linked to amino acid or peptide residues, and iminosugar phosphonates and nucleosides will be reviewed.