Publications by Alexander Lund Nielsen

Bulk measurement of membrane permeability for random cyclic peptides in living cells to guide drug development

Christian Heinis, Anne Sofie Luise Zarda, Alexander Lund Nielsen

Cyclic peptides are attractive for drug discovery due to their excellent binding properties and the potential to cross cell membranes. However, by far not all cyclic peptides are cell permeable, and measuring or predicting their membrane permeability is no ...

Wiley2025

Large Macrocyclic Libraries via Thioether Cyclization

Alexander Lund Nielsen

Macrocyclic peptides, known for their high specificity, binding affinity, and potential membrane permeability, represent a promising modality in drug discovery, particularly for intracellular targets deemed undruggable by conventional small molecules. Trad ...

Humana Press Inc.2025

Discovery of De Novo Macrocycle Inhibitors of Histone Deacetylase 11

Christian Heinis, Anne Sofie Luise Zarda, Alexander Lund Nielsen, Edward Jeffrey Will

Histone deacetylase (HDAC) enzymes are epigenetic regulators that affect diverse protein function by removing acyl groups from lysine side chains throughout the proteome. The most recently discovered human isozyme, HDAC11, differs from other HDACs in subst ...

2025

Solid-phase peptide synthesis in 384-well plates

Christian Heinis, Anne Sofie Luise Zarda, Alexander Lund Nielsen, Sevan Mleh Habeshian, Gontran Sangouard, Mischa Schüttel, Edward Jeffrey Will

Newer solid-phase peptide synthesis and release strategies enable the production of short peptides with high purity, allowing direct screening for desired bioactivity without prior chromatographic purification. However, the maximum number of peptides that ...

2024

Cyclic Peptides for Drug Development

Christian Heinis, Xinjian Ji, Alexander Lund Nielsen

Cyclic peptides are fascinating molecules abundantly found in nature and exploited as molecular format for drug development as well as other applications, ranging from research tools to food additives. Advances in peptide technologies made over many years ...

Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH2024

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

Nanomole-scale photochemical thiol-ene chemistry for high-throughput late-stage diversification of peptide macrocycles

Mischa Schüttel, Alexander Lund Nielsen, Mark Daniel Nolan

The photochemical thiol-ene reaction is an efficient method for rapid and chemoselective formation of thioether linkages under mild conditions. It has found widespread use in small-molecule synthesis as well as peptide and protein chemistry. While high-thr ...

WILEY2023

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

Substrates and Cyclic Peptide Inhibitors of the Oligonucleotide-Activated Sirtuin 7

Alexander Lund Nielsen

The sirtuins are NAD+-dependent lysine deacylases, comprising seven isoforms (SIRT1-7) in humans, which are involved in the regulation of a plethora of biological processes, including gene expression and metabolism. The sirtuins share a common hydrolytic m ...

Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH2023

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