4-O-(2-Acetamido-2-deoxy-β-D-glucopyranosyl)-2-acetamido-2-deoxy-D-mannopyranose (2) was prepared from diacetylchitobiose (1) by Lobry de Bruyn-Alberda van Ekenstein rearrangement under catalysis of Ca(OH)2. The disaccharide2shows about ten times higher affinity than1towards NKR-P1 protein acting as a crucial activating receptor of rat natural killer cells (leukocytes). Chitotriose (3) can be epimerized analogously to give GlcNAcβ1-4GlcNAcβ1-4ManNAc (4) and its binding properties to NKR-P1 are also about ten times higher than those of3.