Fine Tuning the Properties of Stapled Peptides by Stereogenic α-Amino Acid Bridges

Peptide stapling represents a versatile strategy to generate peptide derivatives with stable helical structures. While a wide range of skeletons have been investigated for cyclizing the side chains of peptides, the stereochemical outcomes from the linkers remain to be better understood. In this study, we incorporated α-amino acids (α-AAs) as bridges to construct side chain-stapled analogs of an interleukin-17A-binding peptide (HAP) and evaluated the impacts of the staples on the peptide's properties. While all AA-derived peptidyl staples drastically increase the enzymatic stability of HAP, our results indicate that compared to the D-amino acid bridges, the L-AA-based staples may generate more significant impacts in increasing the helicity and enhancing the interleukin-17A(IL-17A)-binding affinity of the modified peptide. Using Rosetta modelling and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, we demonstrate that the chirality (L/D) possessed within the AAs substantially influences the conformation of stapled HAP peptides, providing either stabilizing or destabilizing effects. Based on the computational model, a modification of the stapled HAP leads to the discovery of a peptide with further enhanced helicity, enzymatic stability and IL-17A-inhibiting ability. This systematic study reveals that chiral AAs can serve as modulatory linkers for optimizing the structures and properties of stapled peptides.