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This week's Chemistry Nobel puts mirror-image molecules in focus. Here is what that means for peptide testing

The 2026 Chemistry Nobel recognises work on how one mirror-image form of a molecule can come to dominate. For synthetic peptides, that same chemistry sits behind enantiomeric purity testing, a quality check European guidance describes in detail.

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Ethanol and water replace harsher solvents in a route to pseudoproline dipeptide building blocks

A team at R.

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A newly mapped family of bacterial proteases trims peptides at one chosen site

Researchers at institutions in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, China, including Shenzhen Bay Laboratory and Sun Yat-sen University, reported in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, published online on 8 October, a clade of cyanobactin proteases that process a wide range of peptide substrates while keeping strict selectivity for their recognition sequence.

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Graph deep learning guides the design of chemically modified ultrashort antimicrobial peptides

Researchers at Zhejiang University of Technology in Hangzhou, China, reported in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, published online on 7 October, a deep learning framework called SMAMP that represents antimicrobial peptides as molecular graphs built from their full chemical structure rather than as strings of standard amino acids.

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Peptide capabilities widen as contract manufacturers expand in India and the US

Two contract manufacturers have announced moves that add peptide capabilities.

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Peptide coatings offer a modular way to tune lipid nanoparticles for mRNA delivery

A team at Tianjin University has reported in Biomacromolecules, published online on 6 October, a modular way to modify lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) after they have been formulated, by coating their surfaces with peptides through physical assembly instead of chemically changing the core lipids.

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Tunable glycine chemistry singles out Staphylococcus aureus in laboratory and mouse models

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Bhopal and collaborating institutes reported in Nature Communications on 5 October an electronically tunable chemical method that selectively modifies N-terminal glycine, a low-frequency molecular signature in peptides and proteins.

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US peptide manufacturing capacity grows as two contract manufacturers expand

Two contract development and manufacturing organisations have announced US expansions that include peptide work.

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Catalytic ring-closing chemistry opens a route to strained, atropisomeric cyclic peptides

A team at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry in Prague (IOCB Prague) has reported a catalytic macrocyclization that forms sterically hindered carbon–nitrogen bonds through an intramolecular nucleophilic aromatic substitution (SNAr) reaction.

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A short lipidated peptide breaks an ion-channel partnership and quiets pain-signalling neurons in mouse models

Researchers at Boston Children's Hospital have reported in Cell Reports Medicine that the sodium channel NaV1.8, which helps pain-sensing neurons fire, depends on a scaffolding protein called ankyrin-G (Ank3) to sustain the heightened electrical activity seen in pathological pain.

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