To develop a new synthetic polymer containing sugar branches, radical polymerization of the reducing vinyl sugar ester 6-O-vinyladipoyl-D-glucose (1) was performed in an organic solvent or in water. The polymers obtained with several azoinitiators in dimethylformamide (DMF) showed comparatively low average molecular weight ((M) over bar(n) approximate to 4500). In contrast, the use of a redox initiator (FeSO4 and H2O2) in water gave polymers of higher average molecular weight ((M) over bar(n) = 33 000) in higher yield (90%), followed by crosslinking at high conversions.