’A lot of work was invested before I was able to control these reactions’

Dr Charlotte Teschers has developed an automated method for producing -glycomimetics-. Dr Charlotte Teschers wrote her doctoral thesis in Ryan Gilmour's group © privat One project, one researcher and five years of intensive work: as part of her doctoral thesis, supervised by Prof. Ryan Gilmour at the Institute of Organic Chemistry, Dr. Charlotte Teschers has successfully developed a new method of producing complex, fluorinated sugars. For this purpose, she used a specially engineered instrument which produces carbohydrates in an automated fashion - a "Glyconeer". In this interview with Christina Hoppenbrock, Charlotte Teschers - who is currently a post-dcotoral research fellow at the "Technion - Israel Institute of Technology" in Haifa - explains why sugar chains are so important in bio-medicineand why producing them is so complicated, despite having this unique machine. Carbohydrates are something we associate with cornflakes and pasta. What, for a chemist, is so interesting about carbohydrates? These sugar chains, which we also call glycans, are incredibly versatile - perhaps, actually, most structurally and functionally versatile class of biomolecules in nature. Short sugar compounds are sources of energy.