Immel JR, Chilamari M, Bloom S. Combining flavin photocatalysis with parallel synthesis: a general platform to optimize peptides with non-proteinogenic amino acids.
Chem Sci 2021;
12:10083-10091. [PMID:
34377401 PMCID:
PMC8317666 DOI:
10.1039/d1sc02562g]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/07/2021] [Accepted: 06/28/2021] [Indexed: 02/06/2023] Open
Abstract
Most peptide drugs contain non-proteinogenic amino acids (NPAAs), born out through extensive structure-activity relationship (SAR) studies using solid-phase peptide synthesis (SPPS). Synthetically laborious and expensive to manufacture, NPAAs also can have poor coupling efficiencies allowing only a small fraction to be sampled by conventional SPPS. To gain general access to NPAA-containing peptides, we developed a first-generation platform that merges contemporary flavin photocatalysis with parallel synthesis to simultaneously make, purify, quantify, and even test up to 96 single-NPAA peptide variants via the unique combination of boronic acids and a dehydroalanine residue in a peptide. We showcase the power of our newly minted platform to introduce NPAAs of diverse chemotypes-aliphatic, aromatic, heteroaromatic-directly into peptides, including 15 entirely new residues, and to evolve a simple proteinogenic peptide into an unnatural inhibitor of thrombin by non-classical peptide SAR.
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