Microwave Peptide Synthesis Highlighted at European Peptide Symposium
Complete the form below to unlock access to ALL audio articles.
The 30th European Peptide Symposium, held August 31 – September 5, 2008 in Helsinki, Finland, featured research from some of the world’s leading chemists, many of whom are increasingly turning to microwave peptide synthesis to drive their reactions.
In the last five years, literature on the subject of microwave peptide synthesis has increased dramatically, with many papers focusing on the speed of the method and the fact that it facilitates the production of difficult peptides, including those that chemists have not been able to make using conventional methods.
Instrumentation has also made improvements and chemists have seen not only the evolution of automated microwave peptide synthesis, but EPS attendees also had a sneak peek of a new microwave cleavage system launched at the show.
In all, 26 posters highlighting microwave peptide synthesis were presented during the conference including research on the synthesis of peptide vaccines, on-bead disulfide bond formation, synthesis of non-natural amino acids, peptide synthesis in an aqueous environment, syntheses of glycosylated peptides and viral peptides, and on-resin ring closing metathesis. There was also a poster discussing the synthesis of a 111-mer peptide successfully completed using microwave peptide synthesis.
Well-known researcher, Dr. Anna Maria Papini, PhD, of the University of Florence in Italy, received the Leonidas Zervas Award for outstanding contributions to peptide chemistry. In her award lecture, “Peptide-based immunoassays for biomarkers detection: A challenge for translational research,” Dr. Papini mentioned her work with microwave peptide synthesis. She has successfully been using a Liberty™ Microwave Peptide System to synthesize difficult glycopeptides for her research.
On Tuesday, September 2nd, 300 people attended a luncheon hosted by CEM Corporation on the topic which featured 7 speakers who presented posters at the conference discussing their work in microwave peptide synthesis.
Lastly, CEM launched a new microwave cleavage system called Accent at EPS. The latest addition to the Company’s microwave peptide synthesis line of instrumentation is a dedicated system for peptide cleavage sample preparation and isolation.
Accent is designed to perform a full peptide cleavage in 30 minutes or less and microcleavages in as little as 5 minutes. The new system generated a great deal of interest due to the fact that it enables chemists to know very quickly the progress of their peptide synthesis without introducing long downtimes on their peptide synthesizer.
