Oral Presentation 10th Modern Solid Phase Peptide Synthesis & Its Applications Symposium 2025

Studies on Cell Penetrating Peptide Conjugated Drugs (130642)

Vijayalekshmi Sarojini 1 , Kamal D Patel 2 , Gayan H De Zoysa 1 , Anirban Bhunia 3 , Devyani Haldar 4
  1. The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
  2. Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
  3. Department of Biophysics, Bose Institute, Kolkata, India
  4. Laboratory of Chromatin Biology and Epigenetics , Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad, India

Decreased cellular uptake of drugs is a major factor that contributes to drug resistance, and this applies to both infectious diseases and cancer.1,2 Cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) have emerged as a versatile class of delivery vectors capable of facilitating intracellular transport of diverse therapeutic cargos, including small molecules, proteins, and nucleic acids.3 The inherent biocompatibility and low immunogenicity of peptide-based systems make CPPs particularly attractive for targeted drug delivery applications. The ubiquitin-proteasome pathway is fundamentally conserved between mammals and fungi. This pathway leads to polyubiquitination of target proteins and their degradation by the 26S proteasome and thereby plays an important role in cancer biology. This pathway is tightly linked to the virulence of pathogenic fungi and their survival in host environments. This presentation highlights our research on the use of CPP-conjugated proteasome inhibitors that have shown promise as anticancer and antifungal agents.4

  1. Vasan, N., Baselga, J. & Hyman, D.M. A view on drug resistance in cancer. Nature (2019), 575, 299–309.
  2. Yunjin Lee, Emily Puumala, Nicole Robbins, and Leah E. Cowen. Antifungal Drug Resistance: Molecular Mechanisms in Candida albicans and Beyond Chemical Reviews (2021), 121 (6), 3390-3411.
  3. Shama Dissanayake, William A. Denny, Swarna Gamage, and Vijayalekshmi Sarojini. "Recent developments in anticancer drug delivery using cell penetrating and tumor targeting peptides." Journal of Controlled Release (2017): 25062-76.
  4. Kamal D. Patel, Gayan Heruka De Zoysa, Manju Kanamala, Krunal Patel, Lisa I. Pilkington, David Barker, Jóhannes Reynisson, Zimei Wu, and Vijayalekshmi Sarojini. Novel Cell-Penetrating Peptide Conjugated Proteasome Inhibitors: Anticancer and Antifungal Investigations. Journal of Medicinal Chemistry (2020) 63 (1), 334-348.