Peptide Synthesis and Technology

The PEG-based resins PEGA, SPOCC and POEPOP are versatile polymers which are suitable for both aqueous and organic chemistry and are ideally suited for peptide and peptidomimetic assembly. The extreme swelling and the solvating power of these resins make difficult peptide synthesis easy. We favor active- ester couplings and introduced the O-Dhbt esters as auto-monitoring agents in solid- phase peptide synthesis. This allowed direct, real-time monitoring of the kinetic behavior of the solid-phase peptide couplings in solid supports. We introduced multicolumn peptide synthesis for simultaneous synthesis of hundreds of peptides and used this technology in the development of the combinatorial multicolumn peptide synthesizer that we employ for the assembly of large split-mix molecular libraries.

This technology has enabled synthesis of a large variety of glycopeptide and phosphopeptide. We combine solid-phase peptide synthesis with enzyme reactions and organic chemistry. The merger of organic chemistry with solid-phase peptide synthesis is particularly interesting because structurally, molecular libraries may bebefit from both the great variety of the peptide world and the multitude of functionality derived by organic synthesis.