Nonribosomal Polyamides Binder Discovery of Ebola Glycoprotein and Development of a Platform for Peptidomimetic Covalent Binder Discovery

Specific recognition of biomolecules in the complex biological milieu inspires principally every aspect of biology and has been a long-standing goal of biological and medicinal chemists. On that front, nonribosomal amino acids and peptidomimetics have revealed great potential through the discovery of potent inhibitors. Designing novel molecular scaffolds that allow specific biomolecule recognition requires broad expertise and understanding in the area of organic synthesis, chemical biology, molecular design, and high-throughput screening technology. Since 2008, I have focused my efforts on discovering novel chemical entities containing amino acids that enable the recognition of biomolecules of interest. Here, I present strategies of molecular recognition via noncovalent and covalent interactions.
 
In the second day presentation, I will describe noncovalent recognition in finding a binder of Ebola glycoprotein utilizing high-throughput screening of large peptide libraries. I prepared large
combinatorial libraries comprising millions of peptides featuring nonribosomal amino acids and discovered the first peptide based binder of Ebola glycoprotein.
 
In the future, I aim at developing an innovative approach for the discovery of peptidomimetic therapeutics and diagnostics for the treatment of neglected tropical diseases. My long term vision is to develop dengue inhibitors by specifically targeting dengue envelope protein. I believe, the discovery of such chemical entities will have a tremendous beneficial impact on Indian society and tropical countries in general.