News and Research Archive
Macrocyclic Peptide Ligands
Reflecting recent work in the Suga lab
Prenylation of peptides is widely observed in the secondary metabolites of diverse organisms, granting peptides unique chemical properties distinct from proteinogenic amino acids. Discovery of...
Dominant Rotor Method
Reflecting recent work in the Yudin lab
Helical secondary structures, namely α- and 310-helices, comprise >60% of all secondary structures observed at protein–protein interactions, PPIs, and are responsible for the mediation of many biological...
Antimicrobial Peptides
Reflecting recent work in the Malmsten lab
Published in Advanced Functional Materials, work by members of the Martin Malmsten group at the University of Lund, Sweden, explores the coating of photocatalytic nanoparticles with antimicrobial peptides...
Structure Transitions
Reflecting recent work in the Martin lab
Membrane–peptide interactions are key to the formation of helical intermediates in the early stages of amyloidogenesis. Aqueous solutions of 2,2,2-trifluoroethanol...
Infrared Scattering
Reflecting recent work in the Voigt lab
Natural melanin polymers, biosynthesized from free tyrosine, assemble into microstructures that interact with light, producing a wide range of photonic properties. These structures...
Solid Polymer Electrolytes
Reflecting recent work in the Evans lab
Ion transport is essential to energy storage, cellular signalling and desalination. Polymers have been explored for decades as solid-state electrolytes by either adding salt to polar polymers...
Self-Healable Composites
Reflecting recent work in the Pal lab
Crystalline materials exhibiting non-centrosymmetry and possessing substantial surface dipole moments play a critical role in piezoelectricity. Designing biocompatible self-assembled materials...
Virus Disinfection
Reflecting recent work in the Huang lab
Global pandemics caused by pathogenic viruses have highlighted the need to develop effective and sustainable materials to defend against these viruses. However, most commercial viral disinfection...
Bicyclic Helical Peptides
Reflecting recent work in the Grossmann lab
The inhibition of intracellular protein-protein interactions is challenging, in particular, when involved interfaces lack pronounced cavities. The transcriptional co-activator protein...
Peptide Permeation
Reflecting recent work in the Su lab
Macrocyclic peptides show promise in targeting high-value therapeutically relevant binding sites due to their high affinity and specificity. However, their clinical application...
Defining the Limits
Reflecting recent work in the Jongkees lab
Messenger RNA, mRNA, display is being increasingly adopted for peptide drug candidate discovery. While many conditions have been reported for the affinity enrichment step and in some cases...
Max Cell Penetration
Reflecting recent work in the Kritzer lab
In an article featured on the cover of ACS Chemical Biology, Nefeli Batistou from the Kritzer Lab at Tufts, describes techniques now being used to reveal differential penetration...
Peptide Receptors
Reflecting recent work in the Checco lab
Peptide–receptor interactions play critical roles in a wide variety of physiological processes. Methods to link bioactive peptides covalently to unmodified receptors...
Backbone Modification
Reflecting recent work in the Horne lab
Targeted protein backbone modification can recreate tertiary structures reminiscent of folds found in nature on artificial scaffolds with improved biostability...
Ephrin Receptors
Reflecting recent work in the Sawyer lab
Ephrin, Eph, receptors are the largest family of receptor tyrosine kinases. Interactions between Eph receptors and their membrane-bound ephrin protein ligands are...
Lasso Peptides
Reflecting recent work in the Hartrampf lab
As the chemical space of MccJ25 analogues accessible through purely biological methods is also limited, researchers in the Hartrampf Lab propose a hybrid approach...
CGRP-Responsive Receptor
Reflecting recent work in the Sexton lab
Inhibition of calcitonin gene-related peptide, CGRP, or its cognate CGRP receptor, CGRPR, has arisen as a major breakthrough in the treatment...
Proline Conformation
Reflecting recent work in the Zondlo lab
Using Dfp, researchers in the Zondlo lab at the University of Delaware, published in Biochemistry, discovered that the stable polyproline II helix, PPII...
Peptide Gels
Reflecting recent work in the Schneider lab
Researchers in the Schneider lab, published in Angewandte Chemie, Intl. Ed., discuss how peptide nucleic acids, PNAs, are employed in the design...
Peptide & Enzyme Catalysts
Reflecting recent work in the Wennemers lab
Enzymes and peptide catalysts consist of the same building blocks but require vastly different environments to operate best. Published in Angewandte...
Coiled Coils
Reflecting recent work in the Price lab
Coiled coils are one of most common protein quaternary structures and represent the best understood relationship between amino acid sequence and protein...
Network Pharmacology
Reflecting recent work in the Jin lab
Carapax Trionycis is a traditional Chinese medicine and it has been clear that oligo-peptides from Carapax Trionycis extract, CTP, are the main active substances...
Novel, Rational Drug Design
Reflecting recent work in the Deber lab
As an alternative approach to conventional antibiotics, members of the Charles Deber laboratory, published in Peptide Science, explore a novel...
Bicyclic Peptides
Reflecting recent work in the Nitsche lab
Bicyclic peptides have emerged as one of the driving forces within the constrained peptide family. Due to their unique pharmaceutical attributes...
Alzheimer’s Amyloid-β
Reflecting recent work in the Raskatov lab
Amyloid aggregation is a key feature of Alzheimer's disease, AD, and a primary target for past and present therapeutic efforts. Recent research is making it increasingly clear...
Finding Pulmonary Fibrosis
Reflecting recent work in the Raines lab
Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, IPF, is a disease of unknown etiology that is characterized by excessive deposition and abnormal remodeling of collagen...
α-Helical Peptides
Reflecting recent work from FOG Pharmaceuticals
Molecules that induce novel interactions between proteins hold great promise for the study of biological systems and the development of therapeutics, but their discovery...
Reversible Covalent Warheads
Reflecting recent work in the Gao lab
Falling in between traditional small molecules and antibodies in size, peptides are emerging as a privileged therapeutic modality, one that can harness...
Max Phosphorylation
Reflecting recent work in the Jbara lab
The chemical synthesis of site-specifically modified transcription factors, TFs, is a powerful method to investigate how post-translational modifications influence TF-DNA...
Mechanistic Studies of CyClick Chemistry
Reflecting recent work in the Raj and Houk labs
Macrocyclic peptides have become increasingly important in the pharmaceutical industry. In collaborative work between the groups of Kendall N. Houk and Monika Raj, published in...
Cytosolic Delivery of Functional Cargoes
Reflecting recent work in the Hackenberger lab
In research published in JACS, members of the Hackenberger Group, describe a powerful, simple, and highly effective strategy for the intracellular delivery...
SPAAC Reactions
Reflecting recent work in the Schneider lab
Joel P. Schneider, Yixin Xie, and Tania L. Lopez-Silva at the National Cancer Institute, report a new positively charged azidoamino acid for strain-promoted azide–alkyne cycloaddition...
Pargamicin A
Reflecting recent work in the Del Valle lab
Researchers in the Del Valle Group, published in Organic Letters, report the total synthesis and configurational assignment of pargamicin A, a highly oxidized nonribosomal peptide...
Glycan Biology
Reflecting recent work in the Imperiali lab
Glycan-binding proteins, GBPs, are widely used reagents for basic research and clinical applications. These reagents allow for the identification and manipulation of glycan determinants...
Anticancer Protein
Reflecting recent work in the Bagheri lab
Cancer is one of the leading causes of mortality in the world. Unfortunately, the present anticancer chemotherapeutics display high cytotoxicity...
Peptides and Proteins
Reflecting recent work in the Raines lab
Transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) plays important roles in wound healing. The activity of TGF-β is initiated upon the binding of the growth factor...
PKC Disruptors
Reflecting recent work in the Kennedy lab
Protein Kinase C (PKC) is a member of the AGC subfamily of kinases and regulates a wide array of signaling pathways and physiological processes...
“Imprint-and-Report” DCLs
Reflecting recent work in the Waters lab
Sensor arrays using synthetic receptors have found great utility in analyte detection, resulting from their ability to distinguish analytes based on differential signals via...
Antibacterial Hydrogels
Reflecting recent work in the Schneider lab
Herein, it is demonstrated that a peptide derived from mussel foot protein-5, a key protein in mussel adhesion, displays antibacterial properties, a yet unreported...
Protein Interactions
Reflecting recent work in the Pikaard lab
In plants, transcription of selfish genetic elements such as transposons and DNA viruses is suppressed by RNA-directed DNA methylation...
Ion Channels
Reflecting recent work in the Woolfson lab
The design of peptides that assemble in membranes to form functional ion channels is challenging. Specifically, hydrophobic interactions must be...
B-cell Epitope
Reflecting recent work in the Kaumaya lab
Herein, researchers in the Kaumaya lab describe a novel PD-1 B-cell peptide epitope vaccine (amino acid 92–110; PD1-Vaxx) linked to a measles virus fusion peptide...
Protein Synthesis
Reflecting recent work in the Premdjee lab
Chemical protein synthesis is a powerful avenue for accessing homogeneously modified proteins, but access to large targets has proved challenging...
Peptide Libraries
Reflecting recent work in the Derda lab
Herein is described a divergent late-stage approach to generating macrocyclic peptide libraries with unnatural pharmacophores from readily available starting material...
Stapled Peptides
Reflecting recent work in the Han lab
Diabetes is characterized by pancreas dysfunction and is commonly associated with obesity. Hypoglycemic agents capable of improving β-cell function...
Protein-Protein Interactions
Reflecting recent work in the Pomerantz lab
Herein is reported the first application of protein-observed fluorine (PrOF) NMR to the tandem bromodomains of BRD4 and BRDT to quantify the selectivity of their...
Oxime Ligation
Reflecting recent work in the Burke lab
The current review will focus on the authors’ use of peptide ligation to optimize PPI antagonists directed against several targets...
Tyr-Lock Peptide
Reflecting recent work in the O'Keefe lab
High-throughput screening for inhibitors of TDP1 activity resulted in the discovery of a new class of knotted cyclic peptides...
Peptidomimetic Uptake
Reflecting recent work in the Arora lab
Researchers in the Arora Lab observed that the cellular uptake of peptides is critically determined by the cell line-specifically, they noted that peptides show better uptake...
Antimicrobial Synergy
Reflecting recent work in the Raines lab
Authors Chelcie Eller and Ron Raines find that human LL-37 and human RNase 1 can act synergistically to kill Gram-negative bacterial cells...
Frog-skin Peptides
Reflecting recent work in the Craik lab
In this study, the researchers investigated naturally occurring peptides derived from frog skin secretions for selectivity and activity toward melanocortin receptors...
Flow SPPS
Reflecting recent work in the Hartrampf lab
Flow‐based approaches to solid phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) have been pursued since the method's early days, with anticipated gains in...
Targeting Malaria
Reflecting recent work in the Kennedy lab
Herein is a review of ongoing research aimed at developing constrained peptides targeting protein-protein interactions pertinent to malaria pathogenesis.
Disrupt Ubiquitination
Reflecting recent work in the Walensky lab
The ubiquitin–proteasome system (UPS) is a highly regulated protein disposal process critical to cell survival. Inhibiting the pathway induces proteotoxic stress and can be an effective cancer treatment.
Peptide Hydrogels
Reflecting recent work in the Schneider lab
Herein, a noninteracting multiphase molecular assembly approach is developed to crystallize tofacitinib, a potent JAK1/3 inhibitor, within a shearthinning self-assembled fibrillar peptide hydrogel network...
Antimicrobial Peptides
Reflecting recent work in the Church lab
Church et al. report a tunable chemical genetics approach for enhancing genetic code expansion in different wild-type bacterial strains..
Mapping SARS-CoV-2
Reflecting recent work in the Ng lab
Given the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, identification of immunogenic targets against the coronavirus spike glycoprotein will provide crucial advances towards the development of diagnostic tools...
COVID-19 Therapeutics
Reflecting recent work in the Yousef lab
In this review, the researchers summarize peptide and peptide based therapeutics that target one main entry pathway of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)...
Chemical Protein Synthesis
Reflecting recent work in the Mandal lab
Herein is reported an operationally simple method to facilitate chemical protein synthesis by fully convergent and one-pot native chemical ligations...
Targeting GPCRs
Reflecting recent work in the Davenport lab
This recently published review discusses the current status of the peptide drugs targeting G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), with a focus on evolving strategies...
Constrained Peptides
Reflecting recent work in the Waldmann lab
Guéret and colleagues describe a versatile method for inserting chiral motifs between the ends of omega loops. Peptides are synthesized using traditional SPPS...
Coupling Agent Hazards
Reflecting recent work in the Nowick lab
This case study of anaphylaxis induced by three uronium coupling agents, HATU, HBTU, and HCTU, is a cautionary note for researchers who handle peptide coupling agents frequently...
Aqueous SPPS
Reflecting recent work in the Kolmar lab
The growing interest in synthetic peptides has prompted the development of viable methods for their sustainable production. Currently, large amounts of toxic solvents are required for peptide assembly...
Cyclotide Uptake
Reflecting recent work in the Wang lab
In this study, the recently developed chloroalkane penetration assay was combined with established assays to characterize the cellular uptake and cytosolic delivery of the prototypic cyclotide, kalata B1...
Peptide Self Assembly
Reflecting recent work in the Montenegro lab
Despite recent developments in two-dimensional self-assembly, most supramolecular 2D materials are assembled by tedious methodologies, with complex surface chemistry and small sizes...
Peptide Mimics
Reflecting recent work in the Liu lab
Peptides have important biological functions. However, their susceptibility to proteolysis limits their applications...
Hydrophobic Moieties
Reflecting recent work in the Wennemers lab
Trans amide bonds and fast cis–trans isomerization of Xaa-Pro bonds are crucial for the stability and folding rate of collagen, the most abundant protein in mammals...
Platinum Nanoparticles
Reflecting recent work in the Wennemers lab
Hepatocellular carcinoma, HCC, is the sixth most frequent cancer and the second leading cause of death from cancer worldwide. Sorafenib is the most commonly used FDA‐approved systemic...
Octreotide Analogs
Reflecting recent work in the Papini lab
Somatostatin, SS, is a cyclic tetradecapeptide able to inhibit the release of growth hormone, GH, mainly through the binding to two G‐protein coupled...
Enzyme Sequestration
Reflecting recent work in the Xu lab
Liquid-like droplets of biomacromolecules are emerging as a fundamental mechanism of cellular signaling, but designing synthetic mimics to form such...