Isomerization of glucose to fructose is a key intermediate step for the biochemical conversion of lignocellulose to liquid fuels and chemicals through the sugar platform. This study demonstrates facile and general strategies to fabricate heterogeneous or magnetic base catalysts based on organic bases for the isomerization of glucose to fructose in water. The heterogeneous or magnetic base catalyst can achieve similar glucose-to-fructose yield and selectivity to homogenous organic base catalyst. The accumulated by-products influence the reusability of the heterogeneous base catalyst; however, the magnetic base catalyst shows excellent stability and reusability. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).