Written by Keir Pebody.
I recently attended the first RSC Protein and Peptide Science Group (PPSG) Conference held in Nottingham on 15-16th December, to present my poster on the ‘Exploration of cell permeability features on a SARS-CoV-2 Mpro cyclic peptide inhibitor.’ The conference was greatly entertaining, with talks from speakers including Dek Woolfson (Bristol/Copenhagen) on AI-designed proteins, and Monika Raj (Emory) on designing chemical tools to explore protein druggability. We presented our posters in the new GSK Sustainable Chemistry building, with great posters from all over the UK – reflecting the impressive depth of the PPSG community. It was lovely to have the opportunity to speak to so many other scientists & early-career professionals about their research!
I was grateful to be awarded one of the Poster Presentation prizes by the PPSG committee ‘for innovative research and an outstanding poster presentation’. My poster featured work on improving the cell permeability of a SARS-CoV-2 Mpro cyclic peptide inhibitor discovered previously in collaboration with the group (using mRNA display). This project had been commenced by Dr Siddique Amin (former PhD student in the group), and I have since worked on optimising the workflow in conjunction with AstraZeneca – with the end goal being to improve our structural guidelines for cyclic peptides, to optimise their intracellular permeability and access novel ‘undruggable’ targets.