Medicinal-Pharmaceutical Chemistry Commons^™

Improving Binding Affinity Through Cyclization, Kaylee M. Newcomb, Nicolas Abrigo

Undergraduate Research Posters

Cancer chemotherapy results in systematic damage as the drugs used are also toxic to benign tissue. Sensitizing a cancer cell to therapy by interfering with the DNA repair mechanisms would decrease overall toxicity, as the necessary dosage of chemotherapy drugs would be lowered. The Hartman lab developed a peptide (8.6) that binds with a KD of 1 μM to the C-terminal domain of breast cancer associated protein (BRCA1), blocking homologous recombination. The crystal structure of the peptide shows the tyrosine and threonine residues are close together, suggesting that by cyclizing these positions, the peptide may already be constrained into its …