Table 1. Some important applications of rare monosaccharides |
Rare Monosaccharides |
Application (s) |
Reference (s) |
Hexoses |
||
D-tagatose |
Low caloric carbohydrate sweeteners and bulking agents |
|
D-sorbose |
Building blocks for the synthesis of interesting natural and biological active products |
|
Insect control agent and as a starting materials for producing industrially significant compounds, such as L-threo-2, 5-hexodiulose |
Huwig et al. 1998 | |
D-gulose |
Drug-formulation agents and food additives |
|
L-fructose |
Inhibitors of various glycosidase Mixture of L- and D-fructose kill ants and house flies |
|
L-tagatose |
Starting materials for the synthesis of 1-deoxygalactonojirimycin |
|
L-glucose |
Cytostatic and cytotoxic properties with regards to neoplastic cells that can be used for cancer therapy |
|
L-talose |
Its nucleoside derivatives, L-talofuranosyladenine, can be used as slow-reacting substrate for calf intestinal adenosine deaminase and an inhibitor for the growth of leukemia L1210 cells in vitro |
|
D-/L- talitol |
Potential glycosidase inhibitor |
|
D-allose |
Use for the treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia |
|
Reduce thrombus formation during post-operative period in combination with other anti-clotting drugs |
|
|
Pentoses |
||
D-lyxose |
Starting materials for the production of antitumoral and immunosti mulatory galactosylcer-amide agents, against several murine tumors; useful for cancer therapy |
Morita et al. 1996; Takagi et al. 1996
|
L-ribose |
Starting materials for the production of two rare aldohexoses, L-allose and L-altrose |
|
Use as a potent anti-Hepatitis B virus (HBV) and anti-Epstein Barr virus (EBV) agents |
Tianwei et al. 1996 | |
L-xylulose |
Potential inhibitors of various glycosidase |
|
D-arabinose |
Starting material for the synthesis of antitumor agents |
|
Starting material for the synthesis of dehydroamino acid derivatives, act as azinomycin antitumor antibiotics | Moran et al. 1993 | |
Production of D-erythroascorbic acid and oxalic acid | Loewus et al. 1995 | |
Synthesis of maytansinoid model compounds with significant anti-cancer activity | Goodwin et al. 1998 | |
L-xylose |
Starting material for the synthesis of 9-(2-deoxy-2-fluro-b-L-ara binofuranosyl) purine nucleosides with anti-hepatitis B virus activity |
|
Starting materials for the synthesis of L-ribofuranose derivatives | Chelain et al. 1995 |
|