peptide drug development

Peptides are a group of biologically active substances that are involved in various cellular functions of organisms. Peptides are often used in functional analysis, vaccine research and especially in the field of drug research and development. At present, more than 80 peptide drugs have reached the market for a wide range of diseases, including diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, multiple sclerosis, HIV infection and chronic pain.

MedChemExpress (MCE) offers a comprehensive collection of 2,537 peptides, including bioactive peptides, amino acid derivatives, and blocking peptides. MCE Peptide Library can be used for peptide library screening, peptide drug discovery, vaccine development, target verification, structural activity research, etc.

Peptides, composed of amino acids, serve as crucial building blocks for proteins and have gained significant attention in drug development over the past decade. The advancements in production, modification, and analytical technologies have led to a surge in the potential applications of peptides in medicine. Peptides offer a number of advantages over small molecule drugs, including: greater target specificity and efficacy, more predictable metabolic profiles, easier delivery to where they are needed in the body, and fewer side effects. Peptides are increasingly appearing in all branches of medicine as components of innovative drugs, imaging agents, diagnostic agents, and other complex drugs such as peptide-drug conjugates. To date, more than 80 peptide drugs have been approved to treat a variety of diseases, including microbial infections, obesity, anti-diabetes, and cancer, as well as to develop cell targeting platforms and improve cell penetration properties.

MCE designs a unique collection of 832 peptide compounds. HY-L105S is a peptide compound library that can be provided with solution form based on HY-L105, and can be applied to peptides-based drug development.

Antimicrobial Peptides (AMPs), also known as antimicrobial peptides or antibiotic peptides, are a class of polypeptides encoded by specific genes in various biological cells and induced by external stimuli. They exhibit broad-spectrum bioactivity against bacteria, fungi, viruses, protozoa, and even tumor cells. AMPs serve as crucial effector molecules in the host's innate immune system.Due to their wide antimicrobial spectrum, low toxicity to normal cells of higher animals, high safety profile, low tendency to induce resistance, and additional benefits such as immune enhancement and antioxidant effects, antimicrobial peptides hold significant promise in new drug development.

MCE offers 58 types of antimicrobial peptides, which can be applied in high-throughput screening for research in anti-infection therapies, immunotherapy, anticancer drug development, and agricultural disease control.

Dipeptide compounds have attracted extensive attention in drug discovery and life science research due to their simple structures, ease of modification, and favorable biocompatibility. As small peptides composed of two amino acids, dipeptides exhibit diverse biological activities, including anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antimicrobial, anticancer, and immunomodulatory effects, showing significant application potential in metabolic disorders, neurological diseases, and cancer research. Compared with traditional small molecules, dipeptide compounds possess favorable target-binding properties and high structural plasticity, making them valuable tools for drug screening and mechanism studies.

The MCE Dipeptide Compound Library contains 80 dipeptide compounds and can be applied to peptide drug discovery and development.

Cyclic peptides are polypeptide chains taking cyclic ring structure, which exhibit diverse biological activities, such as antibacterial activity, immunosuppressive activity and anti-tumor activity. Cyclic peptides, with the features of good binding affinity, target selectivity and low toxicity, show great success as therapeutics. Multiple cyclic peptides are currently in clinical use, for examples, gramicidin and tyrocidine with bactericidal activity, cyclosporin A with immunosuppressive activity, and vancomycin with antibacterial activity. Furthermore, cyclic peptides usually have the sufficient size and a balanced conformational flexibility/rigidity for binding to flat protein-protein interaction (PPI) interfaces, which have potential to develop PPI drugs.

MCE offers a unique collection of 96 cyclic peptides, all of which have good bioactivities. MCE Cyclic Peptide Library is a powerful tool for drug discovery and PPI inhibitor screening.

Biotoxins, also referred to as natural toxins, are chemical substances produced by plants, animals, or microorganisms that exert toxic effects on other living organisms. Due to unique biological activities, biotoxins have been widely applied in molecular biology, physiology, pharmacology, and the clinical diagnosis and treatment of various human diseases, becoming an important source of natural drug development. Biotoxins can specifically bind to and interfere with intracellular signaling molecules or receptors, thereby altering cellular signaling processes. Leveraging this characteristic, biotoxins can be used to study the regulatory mechanisms of cellular signaling pathways. For example, neurotoxins such as snake venom peptides can be used to investigate the functional regulation of neurotransmitter receptors and ion channels. Additionally, biotoxins have demonstrated significant potential in drug development across various fields, including neurological diseases, cardiovascular diseases, anticoagulation, and anti-cancer therapies. With advancements in high throughput screening, structural optimization, and antibody-toxin conjugation technologies, numerous biotoxins or their structural analogs have been successfully brought to market, such as Ziconotide, Captopril, Bivalirudin, and Eptifibatide.

MCE offers 90 types of biotoxins, including neurotoxins, cardiotoxins, mycotoxins, and more.

Oceans cover more than 70% of the Earth’s surface and host a huge species diversity. Marine organisms are considered the most recent source of bioactive natural products after terrestrial plants and nonmarine microorganisms. Marine biological sources are taxonomically diverse and include sponges, tunicates, corals, mollusks, fungi, and sediment-derived bacteria.

Marine organisms can produce a plethora of small molecules with novel chemical structures and potent biological properties, being a rich source for the discovery of pharmacologically active compounds, already with several marine-derived agents approved as drugs. Ziconotide, a peptide originally discovered in a tropical cone snail, was the first marine-derived compound to be approved in the United States in December 2004 for the treatment of pain. Then, in October 2007, Trabectedin became the first marine anticancer drug to be approved in the European Union.

MCE offers a unique collection of 63 marine-sourced natural products which can be used for drug discovery for high throughput screening (HTS) and high content screening (HCS). MCE marine-sourced natural product library is an important source for drug discovery and development.