sentence: There is a desperate need for new treatments for this disease , with a requirement for the identification of new drug targets and potential therapeutic agents.1 – 3 The biology of carbohydrates — glycobiology4 — presents many underexplored targets and opportunities5 ,6 for drug discovery.7 Including T. cruzi8 makes extensive use of cell surface mucin glycoproteins9 and associated enzyme activities , trans-sialidases , in its ' attempt to evade the human immune response of one hand , and to adhere to and invade host cells on the other.10 ,11 T. cruzi trans-sialidase ( TcTS ) is considered a relevant drug target for Chagas ' disease.12 ,13 With this in mind , we have investigated glycopeptide substrates for and inhibitors of TcTS ,14,15 including the application of CuAAC click chemistry16 with carbohydrate building blocks17 – 19 to access libraries of small molecule inhibitors20 – 22 and multivalent TcTS ligands displayed on calixarene cores.23There is much current interest in the use of multivalent glycoconjugates as anti-pathogen agents18 ,24,25 and click chemistry presents interesting opportunities for the generation of oligomeric triazole-linked structures.26 ,27,27 b CuAAC click chemistry has found application in the synthesis of analogues of cyclic oligosaccharides ,27 with medium size macrocycles being prepared in moderate to good yields starting both from protected28 ,29 and ‘ free ’ sugar derivatives.30 ,31 There are only a few examples of the successful oligomerisation / polymerisation of such azide-alkyne-functionalised carbohydrates leading to linear oligomers , including recent proximity-driven click-polymerization of an 4-O-propargyl - β - d-galactopyranosyl azide in a crystal lattice32 ,33 and click-polymerisation of an open chain azido-alkyne derivative of gluconamide .