The Kay lab at the University of Utah is focused on D-peptide inhibitor development, which requires the chemical synthesis of mirror-image protein targets. This webinar will describe the use of recently developed chemical and computational tools to accelerate chemical protein synthesis of large proteins. Specific topics will include recently developed next-generation “helping hand” traceless linkers to improve peptide solubility, the use of traceless templating to accelerate ligations, and our automated ligator program (Aligator) for prediction of the optimal synthetic routes. 

LEARNING OBJECTIVES: 

• “Helping hand” traceless linkers are a valuable tool for solubilizing difficult peptide segments. 
• Templated ligations greatly accelerate ligations and can rescue otherwise suboptimal ligation junctions. 
• Computational simulation of potential chemical protein synthesis routes can be used to predict optimal synthesis strategies. 

Who should attend: 

• Scientist, Senior Scientists, Technical Leaders or researchers with an interest in peptide or protein chemistry. 
• PhD Candidates, Post-Doctoral Researchers 
• Researchers involved in Peptide Therapeutics or Peptide Synthesis. 

​DATE: 

• 2020.11.14 2am - 3am KST (Friday, November 13th, 2020. 12pm – 1pm EST)  

​Speaker:  MICHAEL S. KAY PROFESSOR OF BIOCHEMISTRY 

Date: Tuesday, July 28, 2020 
1st session: 10am EDT/4pm CET (한국시간 2020년 7월 28일 11:00PM - 11:30PM KST)
2nd session: 11am PST/2pm EDT (한국시간 2020년 7월 28일 03:00AM - 3:30AM KST)

Therapeutic peptides have many advantages, including high activity, broad chemical and biological diversity, and low toxicity. These and the relative ease and low cost of peptide manufacture compared to protein-based biologicals has meant that therapeutic peptides are now being used to treat a range of conditions, including metabolic diseases, cancer, cardiovascular, and infectious diseases.

The speed and flexibility of peptide synthesis is a major advantage when handling rapidly evolving conditions, such as neoantigen peptide-based vaccines for the individualized immunotherapy of certain forms of cancer. The dynamics of neoantigen presentation by the tumor cells demands high peptide purity and yield, and also the ability to quickly synthesize many peptides in parallel for timely treatment. Such performance will be invaluable in fighting COVID-19.

This session in the “SPPS Tips for Success” webinar series will focus on the synthesis  of 24 SARS-CoV-2 peptides with therapeutic potential which represents a real-world example of synthetic challenges brought by a diverse range of sequences (based on published work by Grifoni and colleagues (1)). Other applications covered in this presentation include the synthesis of GLP-1 receptor agonists as an important treatment for type 2 diabetes, and the synthesis of neoantigen peptides for metastatic melanoma cell therapy development (2). In addition to application data, here we also discuss features of peptides synthesizers that are critical for cGMP and regulatory compliance when manufacturing peptide products for clinical use. Which hardware options are important? What software features should be included, such as designing for 21CFR Part 11 compliance? And what needs to be included in an IQ/OQ package for a peptide synthesizer instrument.

(1) Grifoni, A. et al. Cell Host & Microbe 27, 671–680 April 8, 2020
(2) Lu, Y et al. Clin Cancer Res. 2014 July 1; 20(13)
​
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Understand how peptide-based epitopes and therapeutics are synthesized for COVID-19 and Neoantigen applications, as well as GLP-1 agonists therapeutics for type-2 diabetes treatments.
• Learn how to optimize peptide syntheses through reagent and condition screening.
• Understand which factors are important for the manufacture of clinical peptides under cGMP conditions.

Date: Tuesday, July 28, 2020
1st session: 10am EDT/4pm CET
2nd session: 11am PST/2pm EDT

Speaker:
Dr. Cyf Ramos-Colon, Senior Scientist, Gyros Protein Technologies
Cyf N. Ramos-Colón is the senior scientist of peptide chemistry at Gyros Protein Technologies. After completing her PhD in Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry under the supervision of Professor Victor Hruby at the University of Arizona, Cyf then joined the team at Gyros Protein Technologies where she focuses on developing methods for automated solid phase peptide synthesis and together with the R&D, sales and service teams, supports customers globally with their peptide applications. She has presented in multiple peptide conferences worldwide.
​

Food matrices are heterogeneous samples with high chemical complexity. A major requisite for reliable food analysis is thus related to representative sampling. The concept of representative food analysis may seem trivial, the practical implementation of this concept is usually not. Raman spectroscopy is a non-destructive technique for measuring a material’s chemical composition and Raman can be used for food analysis. However, traditional microscope or small-area contact probes do not enable representative sampling, and this has been one of the main challenges preventing the widespread use of this technique in food analysis. Today, recent instrumental developments have faced this challenge by providing new possibilities for probing deeper layers of opaque biological materials, and for covering larger parts of a sample. Spatially offset Raman spectroscopy (SORS) and large volumetric probes are two examples in this area, but still, these approaches have not found widespread use in food analysis.