Research Highlights

Please join us in congratulating our former postdoc Dr Li Anquan and third-year PhD student Zhang Honghua, whom are the co-first authors of this work. Noratika Binte Nazri (a graduated PHS student) and Wan Mingxin (a first-year PhD student) are co-authors. Their publication titled “Expanding the Chemical Space of Mechanically Interlocked Peptides (MIPs) via Rational Design and Metabolite Profiling” has been published in JACS Au (IF 8.41).

This study reports a robust and generalizable strategy for constructing mechanically interlocked peptides (MIPs) using active-template Cu(I)-catalyzed azide–alkyne cycloaddition (AT-CuAAC). Through systematic evaluation of amino acid side chains, macrocycle size, and peptide length, the study team established rational design principles that enable efficient interlocking across diverse peptide architectures. Stability assays demonstrated that the mechanical bond markedly enhances peptide stability in both plasma and whole blood, while metabolite profiling further revealed the protective scope of the interlocked architecture.

JACS Au (Journal of the American Chemical Society Au) is a fully open-access, peer-reviewed journal published by the American Chemical Society, covering a broad range of chemistry disciplines including analytical, organic, physical, materials, and computational chemistry.

Congrats Chong, Anquan, Honghua and team!

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacsau.5c00794