Cyclic Peptides: Current Methods and Applications

TOPICAL COLLECTIONS

Guest Editors

Kuan Hu

National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST), Japan

Dr. Kuan Hu is a research fellow at the National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST), Japan, in radiopharmaceuticals in the Department of Advanced Nuclear Medicine Sciences. Dr. Hu received his BSc in Radiochemistry from Lanzhou University in 2012. He obtained a Ph.D. in Chemical Genomics in Prof. Zi-gang Li’s lab at Peking University in 2017. His doctoral research was focused on developing peptide stabilization methodologies and their applications in PPIs. Prior to joining the QST, he was an assistant professor of Prof. Zhou Li’s group at the Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems of Chinese Academy of Sciences. He carried out his postdoctoral research in Prof. Ming-Rong Zhang’s team at QST (2018.04-2021.03). In April 2021, he was promoted to his current position. Dr. Hu will start his independent research group at the Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College in June 2022. His group aims to develop highly valuable radiopharmaceuticals for the diagnosis and treatment of various diseases. In particular, he is interested in peptide and protein bioconjugation methodologies with applications in radiolabeling and molecular imaging. Dr. Hu published up to 60 peer-reviewed papers, 35 of which are first or corresponding authored. He also submitted 12 Chinese patents and 2 Japanese patents. Dr. Hu is an awardee of a couple of highly prestigious awards, including the Research Award from the Japanese Society of Nuclear Medicine and the JLCR Young Scientist Award from the International Symposium on Radiopharmaceutical Sciences.

Dongyuan Wang

Union Hospital at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China

Dongyuan Wang is an Assistant Professor at Union Hospital at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. She received her Ph.D. from Peking University in the lab of Prof. Zigang Li. Her Ph.D. research focused on the peptide cyclization strategy, cyclic peptide-drug conjugate and peptide-based drug delivery. After finishing her Ph.D. work, she then moved to Union Hospital at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. She continued her work on the peptide drug discovery and tried to apply these designed peptides to various diseases. Until now, her work has been published in famous journals such Cancer Research, Chemical Science, Theranostics, Science China Chemistry, Chemical Communication, etc. Meanwhile, she has received funding support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Peking University, and Union Hospital. In the future, she will use peptides as the main tool to solve many challenging diseases.

Collection Overview

Peptides as a drug modality have attracted a great deal of attention, owing to their high degree of specific binding, synthetic accessibility, and ability to target flat and shallow protein surfaces. Nevertheless, other pharmacological properties of generic peptides, such as cell permeability and metabolic stability are quite poor, which restricts the successful application of biologically active peptides as drug candidates. In this context, cyclization is an effective strategy to ameliorate these characteristics and develop better drug candidates.

To date, a variety of cyclization strategies have been established. These strategies have demonstrated an improvement in the number of pharmacological properties of peptides, such as in vivo stability, target selectivity, and cell membrane permeability. With these strategies, an array of bioactive cyclic peptides were identified and showed excellent pharmacological properties in trials. Moreover, several cyclic peptide-based drug conjugates have gained regulatory approval.

This methods collection focuses on the current peptide cyclization methods and their applications in diverse fields covering the following five hot-topics(but is not limited to):

1) peptide cyclization strategy

2) cyclic-peptide based self-assembly

3) imaging agents based on cyclic peptide

4) cyclic peptide-drug conjugate

5) cyclic peptide directed drug delivery

Overall, this collection aims to collect various established and cutting-edge techniques in the preparation of cyclic peptides and to highlight their applications in various fields. Most importantly, our goal is to promote the access of these intriguing achievements to a wide audience and to encourage a myriad of researchers to participate and further develop the trans-disciplinary and astonishing field of cyclic peptides.