Open Access Article
João Louçanoa,
Peter Bothb,
Andrea Marchesi
b,
Linda del Binoc,
Roberto Adamo
c,
Sabine Flitsch
b and
Mario Salwiczek
*a
aGlycoUniverse GmbH & Co KGaA, Am Mühlenberg 11, 14476 Potsdam, Germany. E-mail: m.salwiczek@glycouniverse.de
bSchool of Chemistry, University of Manchester, Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, 131 Princess Street, Manchester M1 7DN, UK
cGSK, Via Fiorentina 1, 53100 Siena, Italy
First published on 22nd June 2020
S. pneumoniae is a major human pathogen with increasing antibiotic resistance. Pneumococcal vaccines consist of capsular polysaccharide (CPS) or their related fragments conjugated to a carrier protein. The repeating unit of S. pneumoniae type 14 CPS shares a core structure with the CPS of Group B Streptococcus (GBS) type III: the only difference is that the latter exhibits a sialic acid unit, with a α-2,3 linkage to galactose. Here, the automated glycan assembly (AGA) of two frameshifts of the repeating unit of S. pneumoniae type 14 is described. The same strategy is used to assemble dimers of the different repeating unit frameshifts. The four structures are assembled with only three commercially available monosaccharide building blocks. We also report an example of how enzymatic sialylation of the compounds obtained with AGA completes a synthetic route for GBS type III glycans. The synthesized structures were tested in competitive ELISA and further confirmed the branched tetrasaccharide Gal-Glc-(Gal-)GlcNAc to be the minimal epitope of S. pneumoniae type 14.
S. pneumoniae is a leading cause of serious invasive diseases such as bacterial pneumonia, septicaemia, and meningitis in young children worldwide, and is listed in the WHO global priority list of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.8 Rising levels of antibiotic resistance reinforce the need for alternative treatments and prevention strategies such as vaccines. The capsular polysaccharide (CPS) is a major virulence factor and the basis of pneumococcal vaccines. Pneumococcal conjugate vaccines contain ten or thirteen CPS types, including type 14.9 The repeating unit of S. pneumoniae type 14 CPS (Sp14 CPS)10 is depicted in Fig. 1. This tetrasaccharide is the minimal immunogenic polysaccharide portion that elicits a protective response.11,12 A conjugate of this minimal epitope showed strong immunogenicity in mice, also as multivalent vaccine formulation combined with conjugates from other synthetic pneumococcal carbohydrate antigens.13
Interestingly, the repeating unit of Sp14 CPS shares high structural identity with that of Group B Streptococcus (GBS) type III capsule, which exhibits an additional Neu5Ac residue α(2-3)-linked to the upstream Gal residue.14 GBS is a leading cause of sepsis and meningitis in newborns and causes an estimated 147
000 annual stillbirths and infant deaths globally.15 GBS capsule is a virulence factor and an important target for vaccine development.16 Ten different serotypes differentiated based on their structurally distinct sialylated polysaccharide capsules are known (Ia, Ib, II to IX) and all are associated with human disease. Serotype III is the most prevalent causing more than half of the infection cases.17
Pneumococcal antigens have been previously synthesized by solution-phase classical methods18,19 and AGA.20 One solution phase strategy to prepare Sp14 used a thioglycoside tetrasaccharide block, corresponding to the repeating unit of Sp14. The coupling of this block with a spacer, followed by removal of an isopropylidene acetal, yielded an acceptor that was elongated with the donor block to give a protected dimer of the repeating unit.21 Other strategies include the use of differentially protected lactose and lactosamine building blocks that were coupled to provide fragments up to a length of eight monosaccharides.22 For the synthesis of GBS structures that contain a terminal sialic acid, enzymatic methods offer an effective alternative to the usually low yielding chemical methods.23 The synthesis of the GBSIII repeating unit has been achieved by enzymatic introduction of the sialic acid in Sp14 structures.24,25 To avoid sialylation in the lactose arm of the structure, the corresponding galactose was blocked with a methyl ether in position 3 that could, however, not be removed in the end of the synthesis. Boons et al. described a fully chemical synthesis of a heptasaccharide fragment of GBS type III based on a convergent approach. The incorporation of sialic acid was based on α-NeuNAc-(2-3)-Galp methylthioglycoside disaccharide which had been assembled by coupling a methylthiosialoside and a galactose acceptor. Similarly, a series of GBSIII fragments have been recently assembled chemically to map the sialylated GBSIII structural epitope.26,27
Here, we take the repeating unit of Sp14 as a target structure and describe the optimization of AGA for this bacterial glycan. We proceed to show an example of enzymatic sialylation of one of the obtained structures to generate the GBS type III CPS repeating unit.
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| Scheme 1 Retrosynthesis of oligosaccharides 1–4 using building blocks 5–7 and the functionalized Merrifield resin 8. | ||
The elongation cycle to incorporate each building block on the Glyconeer is comprised of four pre-programmed modules: acid wash, glycosylation, capping and deprotection (Table 1). The capping procedure prevents the growth of deletion sequences which facilitates purification and increases yield of the target product.28 Fmoc and Lev groups were cleaved as previously reported.28 The success of AGA depends largely on very high individual coupling yields which can be achieved by optimizing the key parameters related to the glycosylation module: temperature of glycosylation, number of coupling repetitions, and excess of donor.
| Module | Description |
|---|---|
| (1) Acid Wash | Resin is washed with a solution of TMSOTf in DCM |
| (2) Glycosylation | Building block and the activator solution (NIS/TfOH) are delivered to the reaction vessel at temperature T1 and incubated for 5 min. The temperature is then raised to T2 and an incubation time of 20 min is followed |
| (3) Capping | Resin is capped by acetylation with a solution of acetic anhydride and methanesulfonic acid in DCM preceded by a short wash with 10% pyridine in DMF |
| (4) Deprotection | Temporary protecting group is deprotected. Fmoc is cleaved with a solution of 20% (v/v) piperidine in DMF for 5 min. Lev is deprotected with a 0.15 M solution of hydrazine acetate in Py/AcOH/H2O (3 × 30 min) |
We defined the initial standard conditions as: 12.5 μmol scale (based on linker loading); glycosylations using 2× 6.5 equivalents (41 mM) of donor, T1 = −20 °C and T2 = 0 °C. After AGA and photocleavage to release the glycans from the solid support, the crude material was analysed by HPLC evaluate the success of the synthesis and the target product was purified by preparative HPLC. With these conditions, the target tetrasaccharide 9 was obtained in 12% yield (Table 2, entry 1). The HPLC analysis of the crude product revealed a significant contamination with the capped linker (see ESI†). When the first building block 5 was coupled using ten equivalents (62 mM), the signal for the capped linker was negligible and tetrasaccharide 9 was isolated in 20% yield (Table 2, entry 2). This finding suggests that the glucosamine building block 5 requires a more vigorous approach to achieve good coupling yield. Before proceeding to the assemble of the dimer 10, the synthesis of oligosaccharide 9 was repeated using ten equivalents of donor in one single coupling for building blocks 6 and 7. The crude material obtained after photocleavage showed negligible deletion sequences (see HPLC in ESI†) and the product was isolated in 31% yield (Table 2, entry 3). With these conditions, the synthesis time was reduced from 13.5 to 10.5 h and 2.5 equivalents per coupling of building block 6 and 7 were saved.
| Entry | BB | equiv. | T1 | T2 | Isolated yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5 | 2× 6.5 | −20 | 0 | 12% |
| 6 | 2× 6.5 | −20 | 0 | ||
| 7 | 2× 6.5 | −20 | 0 | ||
| 6 | 2× 6.5 | −20 | 0 | ||
| 2 | 5 | 2× 10 | −20 | 0 | 20% |
| 6 | 2× 6.5 | −20 | 0 | ||
| 7 | 2× 6.5 | −20 | 0 | ||
| 6 | 2× 6.5 | −20 | 0 | ||
| 3 | 5 | 2× 10 | −20 | 0 | 36% |
| 6 | 1× 10 | −20 | 0 | ||
| 7 | 1× 10 | −20 | 0 | ||
| 6 | 1× 10 | −20 | 0 |
These conditions were then applied for the synthesis of the dimer 10 (Table 3, entry 1). Unfortunately, the major product was the deletion sequence tetrasaccharide 14 (Fig. 2). The formation of 14 can be explained by a very low coupling efficiency of glucosamine building block 5 to the O3 position of galactose. In an attempt to improve this step, the effect of the glycosylation temperature for building block 5 was probed: the temperatures T1 = −10 °C and T2 = 0 °C led to an increase in the formation of the target octasaccharide; T1 = 0 °C and T2 = 20 °C led to a decrease in the formation of the target octasaccharide. However, even with the best temperature set (Table 3, entry 2) the deletion sequence 14 prevailed as the major product. When glucosamine 5 was coupled at −10 °C to 10 °C and repeated in a quadruple coupling, the synthesis proceeded with the formation of 10 as the major product (Table 3, entry 3, 8% yield). Building block 7 was used again in a double coupling to prevent the formation of deletion sequence 13 and the amount of building block 6 was reduced to 6.5 equiv. without formation of deletion sequences.
| Entry | BB | equiv. | T1 | T2 | Isolated yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5 | 2× 10 | −20 | 0 | 1% |
| 6 | 1× 10 | −20 | 0 | ||
| 7 | 1× 10 | −20 | 0 | ||
| 6 | 1× 10 | −20 | 0 | ||
| (2×) | |||||
| 2 | 5 | 2× 10 | (i) −20 (ii) −10 | (i) 0 (ii) 10 | 4% |
| 6 | 1× 6.5 | −20 | 0 | ||
| 7 | 2× 6.5 | −20 | 0 | ||
| 6 | 1× 6.5 | −20 | 0 | ||
| (2×) | |||||
| 3 | 5 | (i) 2× (ii) 4× 10 | (i) −20 (ii) 0 | (i) 0 (ii) 20 | 8% |
| 6 | 1× 6.5 | −20 | 0 | ||
| 7 | 2× 6.5 | −20 | 0 | ||
| 6 | 1× 6.5 | −20 | 0 | ||
| (2×) |
To generate the fragments of the linear frameshift, the best conditions for the synthesis of dimer 10 were used. The synthesis of tetrasaccharide 11 (Table 4, entry 1) was successful and led to 23% yield. The synthesis of 12 was performed by repeating the elongation cycles. An unexpected deletion sequence was identified as a tetrasaccharide with the Lev still present at the branching point at C6 of glucosamine indicating incomplete cleavage of this protecting group. Nevertheless, the octasaccharide could still be isolated in 8% yield (Scheme 2).
| Entry | BB | equiv. | T1 | T2 | Isolated yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 7 | 2× 6.5 | −20 | 0 | 23% (11) |
| 6 | 1× 6.5 | −20 | 0 | ||
| 5 | 4× 10 | −10 | 10 | ||
| 6 | 1× 6.5 | −20 | 0 | ||
| 2 | 7 | 2× 6.5 | −20 | 0 | 8% (12) |
| 6 | 1× 6.5 | −20 | 0 | ||
| 5 | 4× 10 | −10 | 10 | ||
| 6 | 1× 6.5 | −20 | 0 | ||
| (2×) |
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| Scheme 2 AGA of oligosaccharides 9–12, and global deprotection to generate 1–4. Circular arrows represent the elongation cycle for each BB (Table 1). | ||
:
1 MeOH/DCM. In the second step, benzyl ethers, NHTCA and the carboxybenzyl group at the amino linker were removed by hydrogenation catalyzed by Pd/C. Methanolysis of tetrasaccharide 9 was complete after 24 h using 25 mM NaOMe (by MALDI). The crude product was then hydrogenated and purified using a C18 cartridge to give 1 in 93% overall deprotection yield. The linear tetrasaccharide 11 was submitted to the same methanolysis procedure. However, after 24 h, mass analysis showed partially cleaved intermediates and when left to react for 4 days the sample degraded. When performed with an increased concentration of NaOMe (50 mM), the reaction showed similar results. Upon addition of another portion of NaOMe (final concentration 0.1 M) and after another 24 h, the conversion was complete. The crude product was then subjected to hydrogenation. Purification using a C18 cartridge was not sufficient and tetrasaccharide 3 was obtained after HPLC purification as the formate salt (71% overall deprotection yield).
Deprotection of octasaccharides 10 and 12 proved to be cumbersome as the methanolysis could not be followed by LC-MS or MALDI. For branched structure 10, the procedure used for methanolysis was the same as for the branched tetrasaccharide 9. After hydrogenation, the crude product was subjected to RP-HPLC but was isolated with a triethylamine contamination, originating from the work up procedure. The linear structure 12 was deprotected using the same conditions as for linear tetrasaccharide 11. After hydrogenation and RP-HPLC purification, the product was isolated in 22% yield (overall deprotection yield).
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| Scheme 3 Enzymatic synthesis of sialoside 14. α-(2,3)-Sialyltransferase PmST1, CMP-Neu5Ac, alkaline phosphatase, Tris–HCl pH 9.3, MgCl2. | ||
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| Fig. 3 Inhibition percentage of Sp14 capsular polysaccharide using a specific murin serum (saccharide concentration expressed as μg mL−1). | ||
Footnote |
| † Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available. See DOI: 10.1039/d0ra01803a |
| This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2020 |