Applications

1. Pharmaceutical Applications
Many sugar molecules are involved in cell-cell, virus-cell, and bacteria-cell interactions. Therefore, unique glycochemicals can play a role in disrupting such attachment, cell signaling or enzymatic processes, leading to potential treatments for viral and bacterial infections. These molecules also have potential uses in the treatment of diabetes and other metabolic diseases.  Although pharmaceutical products incorporating such molecules have tremendous therapeutic potential, their use in the field has been limited because:

-  Only a small number of natural
   glycochemicals are readily available as
   starting research materials;

-  Synthetic glycochemicals are expensive and rarely available;

-  Methods to synthesize glycochemicals are long or impossible using traditional chemistry.

The zuChem approach provides the opportunity to produce highly unusual, specifically decorated molecules based on carbohydrate scaffolds via methods with are scaleable to economic commercial production levels.  Such molecules have typically been unavailable for high throughput screening by drug discovery operations, leading to limited development of drugs based on these molecules despite the attractiveness of such molecules as new leads candidates.

Overall, the development of economically viable manufacturing processes for this class of molecules may provide much needed breakthroughs in the area of drug discovery, providing significant value to the pharmaceutical industry.

2. Food Applications
Sugar polyols are typically produced from natural raw materials. In most cases, starches and sugars are chemically hydrogenated under high temperature and pressure to yield sugar alcohols. The demand for these alternative sweeteners is increasing, however, because of shortages in the raw materials, prices remain high for many of them. The zuChem approach provides significant cost savings by developing methods that utilize alternative raw materials, and bioprocesses processes that are cost-efficient and scalable.

The most important characteristic of polyols is that they behave similarly to sugar in final products, but contribute much lower calorie content for equivalent levels of sweetness. This is because the decomposition of polyols in the digestion tract of humans follows a different pathway than sugar. This contributes to the demand for polyols as additives to low or reduced carbohydrate foods. In mouth hygiene items such as toothpaste and mouthwashes, polyols give a sweet taste, but do not contribute to tooth decay, as the bacteria in the mouth cannot metabolize it.