Continuous flow peptide synthesis on aminopolyoxyethylene-polystyrene graft copolymer using Fmoc-strategy

An insoluble graft copolymer consisting of the covalently bound polyoxyethylene to cross-linked polystyrene (HO-POE-PS) was prepared by anionic polymerization of ethylene oxide on the resin. The copolymer was then converted to the corresponding amino-polymer (H2N-POE-PS) and the latter was employed as the solid carrier for peptide synthesis. Although HO-POE-PS has successfully been employed as a carrier for peptide synthesis by the standard shaking procedure using t-butoxycarbonyl-amino acids, now we deemed it of interest to test its suitability for the continuous flow synthesis. Thus, the C-terminal octapeptide of the porcine insulin B chain (B23-30) was prepared by this procedure using a photolabile anchoring group and fluoren-9-ylmethoxycarbonyl-amino acids. All the reactions were carried out in a continuous flow manner in a steel column under pressure using a high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) system. At the end of the synthesis, a sample of the protected peptide was cleaved from the support by photolysis. For the cleavage of another sample, an aqueous solution of sodium carbonate was employed. The protected peptide was purified on silica gel and Sephadex-LH 20. All the protecting groups of a sample of the octapeptide were removed with piperidine/dimethylformamide and trifluoroacetic acid and the deblocked peptide was purified by ion-exchange chromatography. The free peptide was shown to be homogeneous by thin-layer chromatography, HPLC, and electrophoresis. The identify of the free octapeptide was confirmed by amino-acid analysis, 13C-nuclear magnetic resonance measurement and field-desorption mass spectrometry. The peptide was also shown to be free of racemization.