The rapid identification of HIV protease inhibitors through the synthesis and screening of defined peptide mixtures.

Small peptides with activity as enzyme inhibitors, hormone antagonists, or other peptide mimetics, can be identified by synthesizing and screening large numbers of peptides as defined mixtures. Several coupling reactions, each with a different amino acid, can be conducted simultaneously and then combined to generate a near equimolar mixture before coupling additional residues. The peptide mixtures are recovered free from the matrix and in quantities sufficient for screening in many assays. We describe the rapid identification of a potent peptide inhibitor of human immunodeficiency virus protease from twenty-two mixtures containing more than 240,000 tetrapeptides.