A team of researchers from the University of Utah and Sethera Therapeutics has uncovered a powerful new way to build more stable and drug-like peptides, opening the door to medicines that could target diseases long considered “undruggable.” Their findings are published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In the paper titled, “Diverse thioether macrocyclized peptides through a radical SAM maturase,” the team studied a natural enzyme, called PapB, that can “staple” peptides into circular structures known as macrocycles.