Peptide research, regulation, discovery. Every story links to the peptide it’s about.
RSSA Sungkyunkwan University team caged an alpha-helical membrane-disrupting peptide in PEG with a pH-sensitive linker. At blood pH the cage holds, at the slightly acidic pH 6.5 of tumor tissue it falls off, the peptide ruptures tumor-derived small extracellular vesicles, and PD-L1 stops shielding tumors from CD8+ T cells in mouse melanoma and colorectal models.
A research peptide PET tracer reflected CD147 tumor abundance more accurately than FDG across eleven patients on whole-body imaging, the developers wrote in Advanced Science on May 26. Three biomarkers (CD147, MCT1, Ki67) tracked the tracer at r = 0.80 to 0.86. The fourth, GLUT1, did not.
Researchers screened a library of double-stapled peptide candidates derived from the RSV F protein's heptad repeat and identified three (3/4i, 3/4m, 4/4g) that potently inhibit viral fusion. The same three peptides retained activity against viral escape mutants resistant to existing small-molecule fusion inhibitors. X-ray crystallography traced the enhanced potency to hydrophobic interactions between the N-terminal staple and the HR1 coiled-coil; intranasal delivery in RSV-infected Balb/c mice reached the lung at antiviral concentrations.
A Japanese group tested two NMUR2-selective agonist peptides, CPN-116 and CPN-219, in mice. Both reached more brain by the nasal route than by intraperitoneal injection. The more stable peptide reached more brain and suppressed weight gain further. Stability rank predicted brain rank predicted weight rank.
A new peptide tracer let researchers read TREM2 inside living mouse brains, lighting up an Alzheimer's mouse model by 86 percent and an endotoxin neuroinflammation model by 114 percent. Knockout mice dimmed by 42 percent and confirmed the signal needs the target.
Campylobacter jejuni isolates that resist the human cathelicidin LL-37 do not block it or pump it out. They sense it, up-regulate the serine protease HtrA, and cleave the peptide between residues 20 and 21. A two-residue swap on the substrate side closes the loop.
A Biomaterials paper pairs each surface peptide on an engineered extracellular vesicle with a unique barcode in the guide-RNA payload, so one pooled mouse experiment reads out which short motifs drive tropism to which tissue. Hits then delivered functional Cre-loxP gene editing in vivo where the peptides said they would land.
Humanin-G, a 24-aa peptide encoded in mtDNA, competitively binds IL-6Rα and shuts down STAT3 in pulmonary endothelium. Patient serum HN spikes on Day 1 of septic ARDS, then fades. Exogenous HNG kept LPS-treated mouse lungs intact.
Female NOD mice on a five-day anti-CD3 pulse (the teplizumab class the FDA approved in 2022) developed diabetes at 66 percent. Adding a beta-cell-targeted GLP-1-17β-estradiol conjugate cut that to 38 percent, the first clean preclinical complementarity in T1D combination therapy.
A team at the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Research in Barcelona and the spinout Endolipid Therapeutics published a short peptide called EDL6D that phenocopies sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG), the binding protein consistently low in patients with MASLD. In mice on a high-fat-plus-fructose diet, the peptide both prevented fatty liver and reversed it once established. Mechanism: it downregulates four lipogenic targets (ACL, ACC, FASN, PPARG) at mRNA and protein levels, and drops the early fibrosis markers Col1a1 and TGF-B1.
A Czech-Australian team engineered an insulin analog called 1(Ins) that binds IGF-1R about 1,000-fold more strongly than native insulin while preserving binding to both insulin-receptor splice variants. Phosphoproteomic profiling shows the new ligand triggers its own pattern of intracellular signaling, not a weighted sum of insulin and IGF-1.
A 9-residue cyclic peptide called BLMP6 selectively homes to triple-negative breast cancer metastases in mice. Tagged with gallium-68 it lights up the lungs on PET. Tagged with MMAE it kills the metastatic cells in place. The Kolonin lab also identified the target: fibulin-4, an ECM protein elevated in invasive human breast tumors.
Chugai reported in Organic Process Research and Development a convergent 24-step liquid-phase synthesis of LUNA18 (paluratide) delivering kilogram-scale GMP material at over 98.5% purity and more than 30% overall yield. The molecule is an N-alkyl-rich cyclic undecapeptide oral pan-RAS inhibitor, binding KRAS, NRAS, and HRAS in both wildtype and mutant forms, with 21-47% oral bioavailability. Phase 1 monotherapy and combination-with-cetuximab dose escalation is underway. The chemistry milestone joins Merck's biocatalytic enlicitide cascade as a second large-pharma macrocyclic-peptide manufacturing answer in two weeks.
Merck published a Science paper on May 7 introducing a biocatalytic cascade for the manufacture of enlicitide, an oral PCSK9 inhibitor in Phase 3 with -55.8% LDL-C reported earlier in 2026. A suite of engineered enzymes handles fragment formation, peptide coupling, and macrocyclization in a protecting-group-free sequence, with crystallizations replacing chromatography. Step count drops by more than half versus prior state-of-the-art. The methodology generalizes beyond enlicitide to the broader macrocyclic peptide drug class facing CDMO bottlenecks.
RoboChem-Flex, a self-driving chemistry lab built from 3D-printed parts, was published in Nature Synthesis at a $5,000 hardware cost. The same week, a hobbyist used Claude Opus to sequence their own genome at home for around the same money. Both signal the same trend: the wet-lab gate is opening on the same arc that opened machine learning.