2.2 CuAAC in Peptidomimetics and Protein Mimics

Abstract

The tremendous recent developments in click chemistry, including the impressive developments of strain-promoted cycloaddition reagents, all started with the copper-catalyzed azide–alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAC) reaction conceived by Meldal et al. and Sharpless et al. This led to a revolution of extremely important applications in the chemical, biological, medical, and materials sciences. It is fair to state that, especially in the synthesis of multifunctional and complex small-to-large biomolecular constructs, CuAAC has been indispensable. This has been particularly evident in the area of peptides, peptidomimetics, and protein mimics. These biomolecules play key roles in the various peptide–peptide, peptide–protein, and protein–protein interactions that are involved in many diseases and disorders, and peptide-based therapeutics can be important in this context. However, it is often important to improve the bioactivity and overall stability, and modulate the spatial structure, of peptide-based therapeutics. The incorporation of the 1,4-disubstituted 1,2,3-triazole moiety as a non-native structural element using CuAAC is explored in this chapter. The resulting incorporated triazole moiety can lead to structural surrogates of the amide bond and disulfide bond. As a consequence, CuAAC can be utilized toward introducing conformational constraints and stabilizing secondary structures of α-helices, β-sheets/turns, or loop-like structures. In addition, CuAAC can be used to combine various peptide sequences with molecular scaffolds to develop protein mimics that can find applications as synthetic vaccines and antibodies.