The natural functional bioactive oligosaccharides moieties, mimosatetr
aose and fabatriose, were cut off from julibrosides and soyasaponin I
by chemical and enzymatic methods, respectively, and were pasted to di
osgenin to give neosaponins 1 and 2. The obtained neosaponins were tes
ted for cytotoxicity and hepatoprotective activity. This method could
be applied to the synthesis of novel bioactive glycosides. (C) 1998 El
sevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.