Dr. Peter ‘t Hart receives 90.000 Euros from the Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation for his research on cyclized peptides

The Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation is funding the research of Dr. Peter ‘t Hart, group leader at the Chemical Genomics Centre of the Max Planck Society, with an Exploration Grant. He will receive approx. 90.000 Euros to explore new research approaches to improve the cell permeability of head to-tail cyclized peptides and their synthesis.

Dr. Peter ‘t Hart is an is an independent group leader at the CGC since 2018. His research work focuses on the development of peptidic macrocycles as RNA-protein interaction (RPI) inhibitors, which play an essential role in a wide variety of cellular processes and therefore in diseases such as cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and heart disease. His group employs both genetically encoded libraries as well as structure-based design approaches to develop new peptidic macrocycles. One type of these molecules are head to-tail cyclized peptides, which have been used as potent inhibitors of a variety of biomolecules which are hard to target with conventional modalities.

His new project is about developing a new method of improving the cell permeability of these peptides by introducing a dithiolane containing amino acid into the sequence. Once a suitable synthetic method has been established, his group will prepare a library of cyclic peptides with amino acids with different properties to study the effect on cyclization and cell permeability.

About the Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation

The Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation is a legally independent, non-profit foundation committed to the promotion of the medical, biological, chemical, and pharmaceutical sciences. It was established in 1977 by Hubertus Liebrecht, a member of the shareholder family of the Boehringer Ingelheim company. With the Perspectives Programme Plus 3 and its Exploration Grants, the foundation supports independent junior group leaders.