Biological tuning of synthetic tactics in solid-phase synthesis: application to A beta(1-42).

The beta-amyloid(1-42) sequence has long been recognized as a challenging target for solid-phase peptide synthesis. We found that the known disaggregating role of Met-35 sulfoxide could be capitalized during stepwise solid-phase assembly of the A beta(1-42) peptide chain to mitigate on-resin peptide chain aggregation, a presumed major source of synthetic difficulties. Furthermore, we demonstrate a hitherto-unreported on-resin reduction of the sulfoxide "aggregation protecting group" to allow for standard cleavage protocols, obviating a separate solution-phase sulfoxide reduction step.