Recent developments in synthetic methods for sugar phosphate analogs

Abstract Sugar phosphates are involved in relevant biological processes, as key molecules in essential metabolic and biosynthetic pathways or as constituents of nucleotides. The synthesis of stable analogs of these compounds as probes for the investigation of sugar-phosphate-dependent biological events or aiming at interfering with such pathways, in the context of a potential therapeutic application, has attracted much attention in carbohydrate chemistry. In this chapter, synthetic methods toward sugar phosphonates, glycosyl boranophosphates, glycosyl thiophosphates/thiophosphonates, and sugar-based phosphonates in which the anomeric carbon was replaced by a phosphonyl group, focusing mainly on reports from the last 20 years, are covered.