Synthesis and biological analysis of natural and unnatural peptides

ORGN 337

Peter Wipf, pwipf@pitt.edu, Department of Chemistry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Over the last few years, there has been a surge in the number of peptides and peptidomimetics in the drug discovery pipeline. In a notable turnaround from the dire assessment of the field by pharmaceutical insiders in the late 1980's and early 1990's, the potential of peptide therapeutics has considerably increased. This development is promoted by improvements in manufacturing techniques, a better understanding of factors that stabilize peptides, research into active and passive membrane transport of peptides and peptidomimetics, and by major recent success stories such as the market introduction of several synthetic oligopeptides. In this presentation, current developments in our lab toward the synthesis, conformational analysis, and biological evaluation of proteinogenic as well as unnatural peptides, and peptide-related alkaloids will be discussed.