Recent Peptide Publications

Omnix Medical has advanced OMN6, a cyclized, protease-resistant antimicrobial peptide engineered from the classic insect peptide Cecropin A, into Phase II trials against carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii. Founded out of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and advised by, among others, Stanford Nobel laureate Roger Kornberg, the company has just won fresh EU, Horizon Europe, funding to speed OMN6 toward Phase III, adding to earlier NIH support and a $25M Series C. This is a milestone worth noting for our community: one of the founding molecules of antimicrobial-peptide science, re-engineered and finally tested where it counts.

The German Chemical Society will award Prof. Helma Wennemers the Emil Fischer Medal, its historic prize for organic chemistry, at the ORCHEM conference in Freiburg this September. The honor recognizes her work showing that synthetic peptides can perform tasks nature reserves for far larger molecules.

On July the 5th, the peptide and drug-discovery communities lost one of their greatest pioneers. Dr. Richard Houghten was a visionary scientist whose innovations transformed peptide chemistry, combinatorial chemistry, and modern drug discovery. He was not only an extraordinary researcher but also one of the true architects of the technologies that made it possible to synthesize and screen enormous numbers of compounds efficiently.