Abstract

This news section features recent discoveries (December 2023 – April 2024) for developing, modifying and delivering therapeutic peptides and oligonucleotides and is divided in categories: discovery, development, delivery, RNA.
The selection was made searching on Google and Pubmed, with the following keywords: peptides news, peptides discovery, peptides development, peptides manufacturing, peptides delivery, oligonucleotides therapy, mRNA.

Discovery

Fast folding for synthetic peptides and microproteins

Certain types of peptides and microproteins for drug discovery research can be made more efficiently and quickly using a reaction solvent that helps mimic nature’s way.

Chemists can now produce an important class of small proteins called cysteine-rich peptides in their naturally folded 3D structure more reliably and much faster, thanks to methods that mimic what happens inside cells. The advance, achieved by researchers at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) in China and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, is published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

Cysteine is one of the many different amino acid molecules that can become linked together to form protein chains. Peptides are chains that are shorter than many natural proteins. Cysteine molecules each contain a sulfur atom that can become bonded to the sulfur of another cysteine elsewhere in a protein, holding different parts of the chain together.

“Re-creating the 3D shapes of cysteine-rich peptides ha ...