Congrats to Voelz Lab student Si Zhang for her modeling and simulation contributions to this exciting new methodology developed by the Ross Wang Lab at Temple. These new staples use a fluorine thiol-displacement reaction for cyclization, resulting in peptides that not only are more stable their folded conformations, but are also taken up by multiple kinds of cancer cells. From large-scale folding simulations of various staple designs, Si achieved good agreement with experimental and simulated peptide helicity, suggesting that folding simulations can be a predictive tool for peptide staple design.
You can read all about it in the latest issue of Nature Communications:
Unprotected Peptide Macrocyclization and Stapling via A Fluorine-Thiol Displacement Reaction. Md Shafiqul Islam, Samuel Junod, Si Zhang, Zakey Buuh, Yifu Guan, Mi Zhao, Kishan Kaneria, Parmila Kafley, Carson Cohen, Robert Maloney, Zhigang Lyu, Vincent A. Voelz, Weidong Yang, and Rongsheng Wang. Nature Communications 13, 350 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-27995-5