Fast Solution-Phase and Liquid-Phase Peptide Syntheses (SolPSS and LPPS) Mediated by Biomimetic Cyclic Propylphosphonic Anhydride (T3P®).

The growing applications of peptide-based therapeutics require the development of efficient protocols from the perspective of an industrial scale-up. T3P® (cyclic propylphosphonic anhydride) promotes amidation in the solution-phase through a biomimetic approach, similar to the activation of carboxylic moiety catalyzed by ATP-grasp enzymes in metabolic pathways. The T3P® induced coupling reaction was applied in this study to the solution-phase peptide synthesis (SolPPS). Peptide bond formation occurred in a few minutes with high efficiency and no epimerization, generating water-soluble by-products, both using N-Boc or N-Fmoc amino acids. The optimized protocol, which was successfully applied to the iterative synthesis of a pentapeptide, also allowed for a decrease in the solvent volume, thus improving process sustainability. The protocol was finally extended to the liquid-phase peptide synthesis (LPPS), where the isolation of the peptide was performed using precipitation, thus also showing the suitability of this coupling reagent to this emerging technique.

Fast MacMillan's Imidazolidinone-Catalyzed Enantioselective Synthesis of Polyfunctionalized 4-Isoxazoline Scaffolds.

The enantioselective 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition of nitrones and arylpropionaldehydes to generate highly functionalized scaffolds for application in drug discovery was herein investigated. The use of a second-generation MacMillan catalyst as hydrochloride salt consistently accelerated the reaction speed, allowing a decrease in the reaction time up to >100 times, still affording 4-isoxazolines with good to excellent enantiomeric ratios at room temperature. As a proof of concept, further functionalization of the isoxazoline core through Pd-catalyzed cross-coupling was performed, generating differently functionalized chemical architectures in high yield.

Therapeutic Peptides Targeting PPI in Clinical Development: Overview, Mechanism of Action and Perspectives.

Targeting protein-protein interactions (PPIs) has been recently recognized as an emerging therapeutic approach for several diseases. Up today, more than half a million PPI dysregulations have been found to be involved in pathological events. The dynamic nature of these processes and the involvement of large protein surfaces discouraged anyway the scientific community in considering them promising therapeutic targets. More recently peptide drugs received renewed attention since drug discovery has offered a broad range of structural diverse sequences, moving from traditionally endogenous peptides to sequences possessing improved pharmaceutical profiles. About 70 peptides are currently on the marked but several others are in clinical development. In this review we want to report the update on these novel APIs, focusing our attention on the molecules in clinical development, representing the direct consequence of the drug discovery process of the last 10 years. The comprehensive collection will be classified in function of the structural characteristics (native, analogous, heterologous) and on the basis of the therapeutic targets. The mechanism of interference on PPI will also be reported to offer useful information for novel peptide design.

Palladium Catalyst Recycling for Heck-Cassar-Sonogashira Cross-Coupling Reactions in Green Solvent/Base Blend.

The identification of a green, versatile, user-friendly, and efficient methodology is necessary to facilitate the use of Heck-Cassar-Sonogashira (HCS) cross-coupling reaction in drug discovery and industrial production in the pharmaceutical segment. The Heck-Cassar and Sonogashira protocols, using N-hydroxyethylpyrrolidone (HEP)/water/N,N,N',N'-tetramethyl guanidine (TMG) as green solvent/base mixture and sulfonated phosphine ligands, allowed to recycle the catalyst, always guaranteeing high yields and fast conversion under mild conditions, with aryl iodides, bromides, and triflates. No catalyst leakage or metal contamination of the final product were observed during the HCS recycling. To our knowledge, a turnover number (TON) up to 2375, a turnover frequency (TOF) of 158 h-1 , and a process mass intensity (PMI) around 7 that decreased around 3 after solvent, base, and palladium recovery, represent one of the best results to date using a sustainable protocol. The Heck-Cassar protocol using sSPhos was successfully applied to the telescoped synthesis of Erlotinib (TON: 1380; TOF: 46 h-1 ).

Side chain effect in the modulation of αvß3/α5ß1 integrin activity via clickable isoxazoline-RGD-mimetics: development of molecular delivery systems.

Construction of small molecule ligand (SML) based delivery systems has been performed starting from a polyfunctionalized isoxazoline scaffold, whose αvß3 and α5ß1 integrins' potency has been already established. The synthesis of this novel class of ligands was obtained by conjugation of linkers to the heterocyclic core via Huisgen-click reaction, with the aim to use them as "shuttles" for selective delivery of diagnostic agents to cancer cells, exploring the effects of the side chains in the interaction with the target. Compounds 17b and 24 showed excellent potency towards α5ß1 integrin acting as selective antagonist and agonist respectively. Further investigations confirmed their effects on target receptor through the analysis of fibronectin-induced ERK1/2 phosphorylation. In addition, confocal microscopy analysis allowed us to follow the fate of EGFP conjugated α5ß1 integrin and 17b FITC-conjugated (compound 31) inside the cells. Moreover, the stability in water solution at different values of pH and in bovine serum confirmed the possible exploitation of these peptidomimetic molecules for pharmaceutical application.

Simple amphiphilic α-hydrazido acids: Rational design, synthesis, and in vitro bioactivity profile of a novel class of potential antimicrobial compounds.

Pursuing the search for a new class of structurally simple mimics of antimicrobial peptides, we optimized a short, cheap and high-yielding synthesis of mono-charged amphiphilic α-hydrazido acid derivatives. The most active derivatives furnished MICs that are among the best values reported in literature for synthetic amphiphilic membranolytic compounds. They exhibited a broad-spectrum in vitro activity against a variety of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, including two multidrug-resistant strains. In spite of the minimal cationic charge, the best compounds demonstrated to be selective toward bacterial cell membranes over mammalian cell membranes. The relationship between either the antibacterial or the hemolytic activity and the overall lipophilicity furnished an easy way to individuate the best dimensional range for the hydrophobic portions. The importance of a non-disrupted amphiphilicity was also demonstrated. Considering the bioactivity profile and the ease of synthesis, these chemically and proteolitically stable hydrochlorides are suitable for development of a new class of wide-spectrum antibiotics.

Synthesis of α/ß dipeptides containing linear or cyclic α-dehydro-ß-amino acids as scaffolds for bioactive compounds.

The synthesis of α/ß dipeptides containing linear or cyclic α-dehydro-ß-amino acids has been performed starting from alkylidene acetacetamides, which were obtained from α-amino esters via Ir-catalyzed allylic amination. Differently hindered carbonates were synthesized via a protocol involving chemoselective Luche's reduction, acylation, and allylic amination. Depending on the nature of the selected α-amino acid, we observed strong influence on the product regiochemistry due to the carbonate size and the amino-acid side chain. In particular, complete regioselectivity was observed in the aminic allylation of carbonates deriving from amino acids possessing a methylene unit in ß-position. On the contrary, methyl carbonates deriving from ß-branched amino acid afforded different results depending on the hindrance of the carbonate. Moreover, spontaneous cyclization was observed for carbamate-containing intermediates, allowing to obtain peptidomimetic polyfunctionalized dihydropyrimidine-2,4-dione. Finally, by inverting the order of reduction/acylation steps on the starting alkylidene acetoacetamides, the formation of polyfunctionalized 1,3-oxazinane-2,4-dione was obtained demonstrating the wide applications of these substrates for the preparation of bioactive peptidomimetics.