Prof. Assaf Friedler presented in Biology@CREATE seminar.

The topic of the presentation was the use of peptides to study and modulate protein interactions.

Protein-ProteinInteractions (PPI) mediate most of the vital processes in cells and are involved in numerous diseases.
However, it is extremely challenging to make them drug targets. The research in Prof. friedler’s lab focuses on using peptides for the quantitative biophysical and structural analysis of PPI in health and disease. Based on this, his lab develops lead peptides that modulate PPI for therapeutic purposes.
In addition, peptides are used for biosensing based on specific PPI.

In the presentation Prof. Friedler provided an overview of the research in his lab, including recent examples for PPI-targeting peptides:

➢ Control of condensation and aggregation of proteins by multiphosphorylation^1,2

➢ Inhibiting structured and disordered domains simultaneously³

➢ Specific targeting of cancer cells by a designed peptide⁴

➢ Inhibiting protein aggregation in disease⁵

1. Mamidi et al (2019) Org BiomolChem; Mayer et al (2019) Nature Comm; Grunhaus et al (2022) Org Process Res Dev

2. Bressler et al (2023) Int JMol Sci; Bressler et al (2024) BioRxiv

3. Mayer et al (2022) ACSChemical Biology

4. Sohn et al (2022) Chem Sci

5. Garfagnini et al (2024)Chemistry – A European Journal

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