Book excerpt: Carbohydrates in Drug Discovery and Development: Synthesis and Applications examines recent and notable developments in the synthesis, biology, therapeutic, and biomedical applications of carbohydrates, which is considered to be a highly promising area of research in the field of medicinal chemistry. Their role in several important biological processes, notably energy storage, transport, modulation of protein function, intercellular adhesion, malignant transformation, signal transduction, viral, and bacterial cell surface recognition formulate the carbohydrate systems to be an exceedingly considerable scaffold for the development of new chemical entities of pharmacological importance. In addition to their easy accessibility, high functionality and chiralpool characteristics are the few additional fascinating structural features of carbohydrates, which further enhance their utilities and thus they have been able to attract chemists and biologists toward harnessing these properties for the past several decades.This book covers an advanced aspect of carbohydrate-based molecular scaffolding, starting with a general introduction followed by a detailed discussion about the impact of diverse carbohydrate-containing molecules of great therapeutic values and their impact on drug discovery and development. The topics covered in this book include the significance of heparin mimetics as the possible tools for the modulation of biology and therapy, chemistry and bioactivities of C-glycosylated compounds, inositols, iminosugars, KDO, sialic acids, glycohybrids, macrocycles, plant oligosaccharides, anti-bacterial and anti-cancer vaccines, antibiotics, and more.