By first protonating the amine group on a sugar, you can selectively oxidise one of the hydroxy groups with palladium without further protecting groups, Dutch and Swiss researchers show in Chemistry A European Journal.

In organic synthesis, you can’t get very far without protecting groups: you need to protect one reactive or sensitive part of your molecule so that another reactive group can react. All this protecting takes time and effort and can also reduce yields. Sugar chemistry also suffers from this, but the groups of Adri Minnaard and Martin Witte at the University of Groningen and colleagues in Zurich have now shown how you can selectively oxidise aminoglycans at C3 without protecting groups.