Design and synthesis of active heparan sulfate-based probesElectronic supplementary information (ESI) available: Experimental section and compound characterizations. See DOI: 10.1039/c5cc02008e

A chemoenzymatic approach for synthesizing heparan sulfate oligosaccharides with a reactive diazoacetyl saccharide residue is reported. The resultant oligosaccharides were demonstrated to serve as specific inhibitors for heparan sulfate sulfotransferases, offering a new set of tools to probe the structural selectivity for heparan sulfate-binding proteins. Synthesis of sulfated carbohydrate molecular probes and the utilities as specific inhibitors for carbohydrate sulfotransferases.