the major limitation in the application of bioactive molecule is their low permeation across plasma membrane. in 1988 it was discovered, that a natural polycationic protein, the trans-acting activator of transcription (tat) of the human immunodeficiency virus (hiv-1), passed very efficiently through cell membrane of cultured mammalian cells. tat became known as the first cell penetrating peptid...

clostridium botulinum type a (bont/a) produces a neurotoxin recently found to be useful as an injectable drug for the treatment of abnormal muscle contractions. the catalytic domain of this toxin which is responsible for the main toxin activity is a zinc metalloprotease that inhibits the release of neurotransmitter mediators in neuromuscular junctions. a cell penetrating cationic peptide, tat, ...

Cell-penetrating peptides provide a highly promising strategy for intracellular drug delivery. One relevant clinical application of cell-penetrating peptides is cancer therapeutics. Peptide based delivery could increase the uptake of drugs in tumor cells and thereby increase the efficacy of the treatment, either of conventional small molecular drugs or oligonucleotide based therapeutics. This r...

The enormous structural and functional diversity available through combining different amino acids into peptides offers numerous exciting opportunities. This article summarizes recent research highlights from my laboratory in the areas of asymmetric catalysis, supramolecular chemistry, chemical biology. scope includes development bioinspired peptide catalysts, synthetic collagen peptides, porou...

The field of gene therapy is starting to move towards clinical applications but is currently limited by the lack of efficient delivery systems. Cell-penetrating peptides provide a means of cellular delivery for gene therapy applications as well as delivery of traditional drugs. Using cell-penetrating peptides a range of different cargoes have been successfully delivered into a number of cell ty...