Publications by Manuel Leonardo Merz

Large Libraries of Structurally Diverse Macrocycles Suitable for Membrane Permeation

Christian Heinis, Xinjian Ji, Anne Sofie Luise Zarda, Alessandro Angelini, Alexander Lund Nielsen, Manuel Leonardo Merz, Ganesh Kumar Mothukuri, Mischa Schüttel, Zsolt Bognár, Edward Jeffrey Will

Macrocycles offer an attractive format for drug development due to their good binding properties and potential to cross cell membranes. To efficiently identify macrocyclic ligands for new targets, methods for the synthesis and screening of large combinator ...

Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH2024

De novo development of small cyclic peptides that are orally bioavailable

Christian Heinis, Xinjian Ji, Bo Li, Alexander Lund Nielsen, Manuel Leonardo Merz, Sevan Mleh Habeshian

Cyclic peptides can bind challenging disease targets with high affinity and specificity, offering enormous opportunities for addressing unmet medical needs. However, as with biological drugs, most cyclic peptides cannot be applied orally because they are r ...

2023

Development of cyclic peptides that can be administered orally to inhibit disease targets

Christian Heinis, Manuel Leonardo Merz

Cyclic peptides can bind challenging disease targets, but their oral application is hindered by digestion and absorption issues. We developed a versatile method for the synthesis and functional screening of vast numbers of synthetic cyclic peptides and ide ...

2023

Synthesis and direct assay of large macrocycle diversities by combinatorial late-stage modification at picomole scale

Gerardo Turcatti, Christian Heinis, Julien Bortoli Chapalay, Jonathan Patrice Vesin, Alessandro Angelini, Manuel Leonardo Merz, Sevan Mleh Habeshian, Mischa Schüttel, Ganesh Kumar Mothukuri, Gontran Sangouard

Macrocycles have excellent potential as therapeutics due to their ability to bind challenging targets. However, generating macrocycles against new targets is hindered by a lack of large macrocycle libraries for high-throughput screening. To overcome this, ...

Nature Research2022

Cyclative Release Strategy to Obtain Pure Cyclic Peptides Directly from the Solid Phase

Christian Heinis, Manuel Leonardo Merz, Sevan Mleh Habeshian, Ganesh Ashokrao Sable

The synthesis of large numbers of cyclic peptides-required, for example, in screens for drug development-is currently limited by the need of chromatographic purification of individual peptides. Herein, we have developed a strategy in which cyclic peptides ...

2022

Solid-phase peptide synthesis on disulfide-linker resin followed by reductive release affords pure thiol-functionalized peptides

Christian Heinis, Zsolt Bognár, Alexander Lund Nielsen, Manuel Leonardo Merz, Ganesh Kumar Mothukuri, Peter Matei Frisius Pânzar

Thiol groups are suitable handles for site-selectively modifying, immobilizing or cyclizing individual peptides or entire peptide libraries. A limiting step in producing the thiol-functionalized peptides is the chromatographic purification, which is partic ...

2022

De novo developed small cyclic peptides that are orally available

Manuel Leonardo Merz

Cyclic peptides are ring-shaped molecules that emerged as a promising class of therapeutics. While it is often difficult to find small molecule binders for challenging disease targets, cyclic peptides can bind to featureless surfaces or inhibit protein-pro ...

EPFL2022