Nature Communications (Jun 2021)

Anchor extension: a structure-guided approach to design cyclic peptides targeting enzyme active sites

  • Parisa Hosseinzadeh,
  • Paris R. Watson,
  • Timothy W. Craven,
  • Xinting Li,
  • Stephen Rettie,
  • Fátima Pardo-Avila,
  • Asim K. Bera,
  • Vikram Khipple Mulligan,
  • Peilong Lu,
  • Alexander S. Ford,
  • Brian D. Weitzner,
  • Lance J. Stewart,
  • Adam P. Moyer,
  • Maddalena Di Piazza,
  • Joshua G. Whalen,
  • Per Jr. Greisen,
  • David W. Christianson,
  • David Baker

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23609-8
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 1
pp. 1 – 12

Abstract

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Cyclic peptides are of particular interest due to their pharmacological properties, but their design for binding to a target protein is challenging. Here, the authors present a computational “anchor extension” methodology for de novo design of cyclic peptides that bind to the target protein with high affinity, and validate the approach by developing cyclic peptides that inhibit histone deacetylases 2 and 6.