Peptide Publications Archive

Dropout Finds Target

Dropout Finds Target

Tavassoli Lab

Most cyclic peptide screens hunt a known protein target. A new dropout platform asks a simpler question: which library members kill bacteria when expressed inside …

Steric Backbone Advantage

Steric Backbone Advantage

Morimoto & Sando Lab

N-alkyl peptides cross cell membranes with unusual efficiency, and removing their amide hydrogens has long been credited as the reason why. A new study isolates …

Stapled c-Myc Binds E-box DNA Without Max

Stapled c-Myc Binds E-box DNA Without Max

Mason Lab

c-Myc is intrinsically disordered and cannot bind DNA without its partner protein Max, a dependency that has stymied drug discovery for decades. A new intracellular …

Folding by Design

Folding by Design

Hemu Lab

Folding disulfide-rich peptides with three or more disulfide bonds has long frustrated chemists: without cellular machinery, the wrong bonds form first and kinetic traps accumulate. …

Thioamide Disrupts β-Sheets

Thioamide Disrupts β-Sheets

Petersson Lab

Swapping a single oxygen for sulfur in a peptide backbone sounds conservative, but a new semi-synthesis strategy reveals that one thioamide can unravel a cooperative …

Bicyclic Kinase Trap

Bicyclic Kinase Trap

Suga Lab

Bicyclic peptides that incorporate a thioisoindole bridge offer tighter conformational constraint than standard macrocycles, yet building them fast enough to work inside a high-throughput mRNA …

Aziridines by Metallopeptide

Aziridines by Metallopeptide

Miller Lab

Aziridines are prized synthetic building blocks, yet making them enantioselectively from open-chain Z-disubstituted alkenes has long resisted reliable catalyst design. A new dirhodium metallopeptide system …

Dual Resin Clicks

Dual Resin Clicks

Thomas Lab

Generating structurally diverse peptides on solid phase typically means modifying one site at a time, limiting how much chemical complexity a single sequence can carry. …

Deaminative UAA Synthesis

Deaminative UAA Synthesis

Singh Lab

Unnatural amino acids unlock drug-like peptides, but installing them with precise stereochemistry has resisted simple catalytic routes. A visible-light-driven copper catalyst now converts amine-derived Katritzky …

Choosing Conformations

Choosing Conformations

Yudin Lab

Macrocyclic peptides can fold into multiple conformations, but chemists have lacked a reliable chemical handle for selecting one over another. A late-stage lactone-opening reaction now …

Chirality Steers Condensates

Chirality Steers Condensates

Chen Lab

Switching a single residue's chirality in a tripeptide-drug conjugate redirects assembly away from amyloid-like fibers and toward liquid droplets, but only when Na⁺ or K⁺ …

Cycling on Bacteria

Cycling on Bacteria

Tharp Lab

Cell-surface display of cyclic peptide libraries offers a fluorescence-sortable alternative to phage display, but generating stable macrocycles directly on living bacteria has resisted clean, bioorthogonal …

Amidine Backbone Switch

Amidine Backbone Switch

VanVeller Lab

Proteases rapidly destroy therapeutic peptides before they can act, and most stabilization strategies fix this by breaking the very structural features that drive biological activity. …

Ribosomal Nitrile

Ribosomal Nitrile

van der Donk Lab

Nitrile groups are prized warheads in peptide drug design, yet no ribosomal peptide natural product had ever been found to carry one. A genome-mining campaign …

Electrochemical Biaryl Stapling

Electrochemical Biaryl Stapling

Hugh Nakamura Lab

Biaryl-bridged cyclic peptides from ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptides offer compelling drug-like properties, yet their rigid ring systems have made systematic analog synthesis almost …

Switching Foldamer Helices

Switching Foldamer Helices

Legrand Lab

Foldamer chemists have long sought a simple switch to redirect backbone folding between distinct helical states. A French research team shows that permuting or substituting …

Condensate Surface Surfers

Condensate Surface Surfers

Arosio Lab

Biomolecular condensate interfaces drive protein aggregation and redox reactions, yet no general strategy existed for designing short peptides that park specifically at that boundary rather …

Locking the Helix

Locking the Helix

Wendeborn and Shahgaldian Groups

Short peptides rarely hold their α-helical shape at physiological temperatures, which limits their use in nanomaterial interfaces. A covalent surface-chemistry strategy on silica nanoparticles not …

Weighing Without Weighing

Weighing Without Weighing

Lubell Lab

Trifluoroacetic acid is ubiquitous in peptide synthesis and purification, yet quantifying how much remains in a final salt requires destroying the sample or trusting an …

Boronic Glycan Hunters

Boronic Glycan Hunters

Suga Lab

Glycans drive cancer progression yet resist the synthetic binders that proteins attract so readily. A new platform combining genetic code reprogramming with mRNA display now …

Predicting Peptide Futures

Predicting Peptide Futures

Chatterjee Lab

Peptide therapeutics fail not for lack of binding but for poor membrane permeability, short half-life, hemolytic activity, and other developability liabilities, and no single computational …

Golgi Ambush

Golgi Ambush

Weindl and Schromm Groups

The NLRP3 inflammasome drives chronic inflammatory diseases from asthma to gout, yet most small-molecule inhibitors target the NLRP3 protein directly and carry adverse-effect profiles that …

Foldamers Fight Resistance

Foldamers Fight Resistance

Cai Lab

Natural antimicrobial peptides promise a way around drug resistance, but proteolytic instability and cytotoxicity have blocked their clinical path. A new class of right-handed D-sulfonyl-γ-AApeptide …

Editing Serine's Silence

Editing Serine's Silence

Li Lab

Serine and threonine dominate regulatory post-translational modifications in biology, yet chemical tools to edit them site-selectively in unprotected peptides have remained out of reach. A …