Peptides future prospects

Fix, J.A. Oral controlled release technology for peptides status and future prospects. Pharm. Res. 1996, 13 (12), 1760-1764. 

BEHR, T.M., GOLDENBERG, D.M., BECKER, W., Reducing the renal uptake of radiolabelled antibody fragments and peptides for diagnosis and therapy Present status, future prospects and limitations, Eur. J. Nucl. Med. 25 (1998) 201-212. 

To estimate the future prospect of lipospheres as a drug delivery system for peptides and proteins, more investigations with a wider peptide and protein spectrum are desirable, as the available data are still restricted to only a few publications. Stability during preparation and long-term storage has not yet been dealt with in detail for peptide and protein drugs, but it is one of the prerequisites for successful protein pharmaceutics. 

Conjugation of l,4,7,10-tetraazacyclododecane-l,4,7,10-tetraacetic acid (DOTA) and its derivatives to peptides, applications and future prospects of the conjugates 07MRO281. 

Chemoselective ligation of peptides using the free amino terminal as nucleophile and a thiobenzyl thioester C-terminal amino acid as electrophile provides an efficient approach to the synthesis of proteins with several hundred residues [30]. From this perspective the introduction of non-natural amino acids into proteins becomes a possibility rather than a problem and chemoselective ligation is thus a prospect for the future for the incorporation of new functionality. 

Advances in the understanding of the immunobiology of skin sensitization have led to the establishment of predictive in vivo tests which not only identify sensitizing hazards but also characterize their potency. Recently, appreciation of the underlying biology has also resulted in the development of mechanistically based in vitro alternatives which offer the prospect of the replacement of current in vivo methods. Assays under active validation include the Direct Peptide Reactivity Assay (DPRA), the human Cell Line Activation Test (h-CLAT), and KeratinoSens. None of the methods have a sufficient level of accuracy or freedom from applicability domain limitations to allow them to act as a standalone replacement. Consequently, it will be necessary to consider how to deploy these assays, perhaps in combination and/or in a structured assessment of skin sensitization hazard, to ensure at least the same level of predictive accuracy as the in vivo methods. However, a challenge remains the capacity of these methods to provide potency information on skin-sensitizing chemicals has yet to be assessed. This is an essential requirement for future risk assessment without use of animal models if we are to retain the same level of human health protection that is currently delivered. 

The aim of this review is to present these recent developments in the vibrational spectroscopy of peptides, polypeptides, and proteins. We will first discuss the necessary basic aspects of normal-mode calculations. We will then give results for those polypeptide secondary structures that have been studied to date, with an evaluation of the insights obtained from these analyses. Finally, we will comment on the preliminary studies being done on proteins and the prospects for the future. 

Although the threat of toxin weapons of the future is formidable, the prospect of new and better medical countermeasures is brighter than ever before. Biotechnology may have more value to those of us who are developing countermeasures than to those who would use toxins maliciously. Molecular biological techniques that have been developed in the last few years now allow us to produce more-effective and less-expensive vaccines against the protein and peptide toxins. Such vaccines will likely... 

Whether SAMs will ever be incorporated in commercial devices is not yet clear, but quite recently a major step was achieved by Baldo et al. who produced a photosynthetic device consisting of a SAM of photosystem I isolated from spinach chloroplasts stabilised with surfactant peptides and coated with a protective organic semiconductor. This device, which has an internal quantiun efficiency of 12%, was stable for several weeks under ambient conditions [240]. Therefore, we conclude that functional SAMs have a good prospect of being implemented in a variety of electronic devices in the future. 

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