Peptide Dendrimers: From Enzyme Models to Antimicrobials and Transfection Reagents

Aiming at studying cooperativity effects between amino acids in easily accessible protein models, we have explored the chemistry of peptide dendrimers, which obtain as pure products by solid-phase synthesis using a branching diamino acid such lysine every second or third position sequence, followed reverse-phase HPLC purification. This article reviews discoveries driven combinatorial library and screening, including enantioselective esterase aldolase enzyme cobalamin binding peroxidase glycopeptide dendrimer biofilm inhibitors their X-ray crystal structures complexes with lectins, antimicrobial dendrimers active against multidrug resistant Gram-negative bacteria, transfection reagents for siRNA CRISPR-Cas9 plasmid DNA. Latest developments include cheminformatics artificial intelligence exploring chemical space, principle stereorandomization to understand role chirality activity.