Palladium Catalyzed Reactions Executed on Solid-phase Peptide Synthesis Supports for the Production of Self-assembling Peptides Embedded Complex Organic Electronic Subunits

Unmet Need
The synthesis of peptides is extremely important to proving the ability to optimize a desired biological response or another result. Peptide synthesis can be applied to a variety of fields, ranging from cancer research to developing disease therapeutics. Peptide structures, although known at the base to be the combination of amino acids, are extremely complicated in both high level structure and function. A problem in both the research realm in both solely research and therapeutic development, is the creation of different peptide complexes embedded with π-conjugated oligomeric subunits, allowing for a new vast library of bioelectronics nanomaterials. There is a need to develop soluble self-assembling peptide structures as this would greatly improve the general synthesis of these complicated structures. There is also a need for new peptides to be developed as this would increase both the library of materials to further penetrate different research ideas, it also creates the basis for the discovery of new drugs and therapeutics in different areas.
 
Technology Overview
The inventors have proposed a streamlined method for synthesizing peptides that are emed with a variable number of π-conjugated oligomeric subunits. This use of π-conjugated oligomeric subunits would allow of unique excitation of electrons creating different reactions that result in different peptide syntheses. They utilize Palladium catalyzed reaction to achieve their goal. By using the power of Pd-mediated cross-coupling, they are able to incorporate several different aryl-aryl linkages embedded within self-assembling peptide architectures. Much of the components being used are available commercially. They chose peptides that were soluble as this has the most applications in addition to various intermolecular reaction that take place with numerous states of the peptide interactions. The solubility issue being solved allows for a greater study of these peptides as they can be manipulated in more environments, further improving their research capability.
 
 
Stage of Development
The inventors have proposed a method for peptide synthesis using palladium catalyzed reaction. They have received money from NIH and are continuing the application of their study.
 
Publications
Sanders, A.M. et al. ACS Macro Letters. Volume 1, Issue 11, 2012, pp. 1326-1239.
 

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