Macrocyclic Control in Helix Mimetics

The α-helix is the most commonly found natural secondary structure in proteins and is intrinsic to many protein-protein interactions involved in important biological functions. Novel peptides designed to mimic helices found in nature employ a variety of methods to control their structure. These approaches are significant due to potential applications in developing new therapeutic agents and materials. Over the years, many strategies have emerged to influence, initiate, and propagate helical content in short, synthetic peptides. Early innovations used the natural macrocycle tether of disulfide bond formation, metal-mediated or lactam group addition as a means to prompt helical formation. These examples have been applied to a host of peptides as inhibitors toward relevant diseases including cancer, viral and bacterial infection. In the most recent decades, hydrocarbon bridges to "staple" peptides across side chains or hydrogen bond surrogates in the backbone of peptides have been effective in producing biologically functional, helical peptidomimetics with non-natural elements, increased protease resistance and potency in vitro and in vivo. Modern methods expand and elaborate these, with applications of functional peptides from both synthetic and recombinant origins. Overall, efforts persist using these strategies to create peptides with great biological potential and a better understanding of the control of helical structure in protein folding.