Late-stage synthesis of chemically modified peptides

Posted on Tuesday 19 May 2026

Researchers in the Department of Chemistry have developed a new chemical strategy to install diaryl ketones into fully deprotected peptides, opening the door to chemically diversify these versatile biomolecules. PhD student James Kleppen and postdoc Dr Neil Scott, from Dr Chris Spicer’s group, in collaboration with Prof. Ian Fairlamb, showed that palladium-catalysed carbonylative Suzuki-Miyaura cross-couplings could be used to access a diverse range of structures under mild, aqueous, and open-to-air conditions.

Key to this work was the use of molybdenum hexacarbonyl as a carbon monoxide surrogate, thus avoiding the use of this highly toxic and flammable gas, and ensuring  this strategy is viable for low-volume, late-stage peptide functionalisation. With peptides becoming increasingly common modalities in drug discovery and biotechnology, such strategies are powerful and versatile tools for industry.