Hepcidin anticancer peptide
A short protein fragment studied in the lab for its ability to slow or kill cancer cells; experimental, not yet an approved drug.
A researcher, an agent, or an algorithm wrote down the sequence and picked a target to hit.
An AI model like OpenFold3 or AlphaFold built a 3D structure and scored how well it fits the binding site.
A second contributor repeated the computation on their own hardware and the scores matched.
Literature-extracted sequence peptide — synthesized for bioassay as documented in linked reference(s)
Fork this card to add platform evidence →
Activity measured in linked reference(s) — IC50/MIC/cytotoxicity data
Fork this card to add platform evidence →
Research directions for this peptide, selected from the current sources — hypotheses you can explore and model. None of it is proven yet; tap any one to see the full thinking.
Could jamming the gate tumors use to move iron starve their growth?
Many tumors lean on a steady flow of iron to keep dividing, and they rely on a special gate to manage that iron. If this peptide can shut that gate and throw off the tumor cells' iron balance, it might slow their growth through a route very different from standard chemotherapy, and might be gentler on healthy cells because those cells depend on that gate far less.
If the useful part of this molecule is only the back half, why build the whole thing?
Longer peptides are expensive and difficult to produce at scale. If only the shorter back portion of this molecule carries the active punch, a trimmed version could cost roughly half as much to manufacture, making it far more practical to test in large studies and eventually bring to patients.
Would this molecule go limp and useless if you removed the internal clips holding it in shape?
Some peptides only work when folded into a precise shape, held by internal sulfur bonds. If those bonds are essential here, making this drug requires a tricky extra manufacturing step, raising cost and complexity. Knowing this upfront helps researchers decide whether to invest in scaling it up or look for simpler alternatives.
Could a single drug help shrink a tumor and fix the exhausting blood-iron problem many cancer patients live with?
Between 40 and 60 percent of cancer patients develop anemia that makes them exhausted and less able to tolerate treatment. If this peptide could tackle both the tumor and the iron imbalance driving that anemia, it would address two major problems at once, potentially improving quality of life and treatment outcomes for a large share of cancer patients.
Is a tiny positively charged patch the part that actually punches holes in cancer cells?
Cancer cells have a different surface charge than healthy cells, which some peptides exploit to punch holes in them. If a short four-unit stretch is doing most of that work here, researchers could build a much simpler, cheaper molecule around it. It also matters for safety: a membrane-punching drug and a receptor-targeting drug have very different side-effect profiles.
▸full evidence table1 metrics
| metric | value | tool |
|---|---|---|
| ranking score | 0.47616758942604065 | boltz-2 |
▸3-letter notation
▸recipeboltz-2 2.2.1
| parameter | value |
|---|---|
| model | boltz-2 2.2.1 |
| weights | — |
| hardware | vast_v100_32gb |
| mlx version | — |
| python | — |
| random seed | 1 |
| msa strategy | none_monomer |
| runtime | — |
| predicted by | — |
| predicted at | 2026-05-23 |
▸citationbibtex
@peptide{pep05233,
sequence = {PPQTRQLTDLQTKDTAGAAAGLTPVLQRRRRDTHFPICIFCCGCCRKGTCGMCCRT},
target = {anticancer},
author = {peptidemodel},
year = {2026},
status = {bioassayed}
}