🔥 Hot Today in Peptide Research

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Medtide completes site purchase for large-scale peptide API production

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Medtide (HKEX: 3880), a peptide and oligonucleotide contract manufacturer, said in a company news post dated 10 October that, as it announced on 24 September, it has completed the acquisition of an industrial land parcel and buildings in Qiantang District, Hangzhou. The company plans to build large-scale peptide API production lines there in a first phase, with a designed annual capacity expected to be 3 to 5 metric tons, and intends to integrate an adjacent parcel in a second phase to create a manufacturing park of about 57,000 square metres. The post presents the site as part of the capacity expansion of its peptide and oligonucleotide CDMO business.

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Azapeptide submonomer synthesis moves onto a standard peptide synthesizer

Photo: HD Wallpapers / StockSnap (CC0) / own upload

Chemists at North Carolina State University reported in the Journal of Peptide Science on 9 October that every on-resin step of the azapeptide submonomer method, from semicarbazone incorporation and alkylation to deprotection and semicarbazide acylation, now runs on a commercially available peptide synthesizer. Keys to success were a stable isocyanate precursor, reagents stable in DMF and dropping the cooling steps. The team made more than 30 azapeptides this way. The work is synthetic methodology.

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Salmonella-only protein boosts the bacterium's response to antimicrobial peptides

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Researchers at the University of Alberta reported in mBio on 9 October PalA, a small membrane lipoprotein found only in Salmonella that interacts with the sensor PhoQ and activates the PhoPQ two-component system. palA expression rose on exposure to cationic antimicrobial peptides but stayed low under low pH or low magnesium, and PalA did not activate PhoPQ systems from closely related species. The authors describe an evolutionary adaptation linking antimicrobial peptide exposure to virulence gene expression.

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Simulations show how sequence steers glycine-repeat peptides folding on graphite

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Researchers at the Universidad de Talca, Stanford University and Kansas State University reported in the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling on 9 October simulations of cyclic glycine-X repeat peptides that fold into beta-hairpins and self-assemble at the graphite-water interface. A GPGG turn best enforced the hairpin, disulfide cyclisation worked as an alternative to head-to-tail cyclisation, GT repeats folded best but assembled most weakly, and GG repeats assembled most strongly but misfolded more. The study is computational.

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Mangrove bacterium yields an octapeptide active against MRSA strains in the lab

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Researchers at Walailak University, Chulalongkorn University and Okayama University reported in Life on 10 October an antimicrobial octapeptide, A34 AMP, purified from a Brevibacillus isolate found in mangrove sediment and confirmed by chemical synthesis. In laboratory tests it inhibited four Staphylococcus aureus strains, three of them methicillin-resistant, with evidence pointing to membrane permeabilization, and kept its activity after heat, pH, protease and surfactant treatment. Genome mining linked it to a nonribosomal peptide synthetase cluster.

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Engineered E. coli Nissle built as a non-proliferating peptide production chassis

Photo: HD Wallpapers / StockSnap (CC0) / own upload

Researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology reported in ACS Synthetic Biology on 10 October a probiotic Escherichia coli Nissle strain whose native plasmids were removed and their backbones repurposed to carry a CRISPR-Cas12 chromosome-shredding device that stops the bacteria from multiplying, plus a programmable circuit for payload expression. As a proof of concept, a cell-penetrating peptide predicted by an AI-guided pipeline was produced in the chassis and tested in human cell culture. The work is preclinical.