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Publication Abstract from PubMed

Peptides are a rapidly growing class of therapeutics with various advantages over traditional small molecules, especially for targeting difficult protein-protein interactions. However, current structure-based methods are largely limited to natural peptides and are not suitable for designing bioactive cyclic topologies that go beyond natural l-amino acids. Here, we report a generalizable framework that exploits the computational power of Rosetta, in terms of large-scale backbone sampling, side-chain composition and energy scoring, to design heterochiral cyclic peptides that bind to a protein surface of interest. To showcase the applicability of our approach, we developed two new inhibitors (PD-i3 and PD-i6) of programmed cell death 1 (PD-1), a key immune checkpoint in oncology. A comprehensive biophysical evaluation was performed to assess their binding to PD-1 as well as their blocking effect on the endogenous PD-1/PD-L1 interaction. Finally, NMR elucidation of their in-solution structures confirmed our de novo design approach.

Target-templated de novo design of macrocyclic d-/l-peptides: discovery of drug-like inhibitors of PD-1.,Guardiola S, Varese M, Roig X, Sanchez-Navarro M, Garcia J, Giralt E Chem Sci. 2021 Mar 2;12(14):5164-5170. doi: 10.1039/d1sc01031j. PMID:34163753^[1]

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.