The search for catalysts for important organic and biological relevant reactions has been a challenging process. Peptide-based catalysts have been playing an important role in asymmetric synthesis for many reasons, in particular their modularity and tunablility. However, a critical length of 15-20 residues is required to obtain a well-structured system and the mechanism involved is often complicated. This has hampered the fast growth of this area. Since countless conformations are possible for one single peptide, the search for efficient peptide-based catalysts appears difficult to direct. Despite remarkable advances in this area in the last decades, inherent issues such as the demands in peptide length, substrate specificity as well as the difficulty in elucidating structure-activity relationships, are unconquerable problems at this moment.

    Peptide catalysts are based on the ability of peptides to form conformationally stabilized chiral environment for the catalytic moiety and well-defined secondary structures for the interaction between the substrate and catalyst to stabilize the preferred transition states.

In this research direction, we aim to

1. Identify new classes of small peptide/amino acid-based catalysts.

2. Expand the scope of peptide-catalyzed reactions such that the new catalysts are not limited to substrates that can form hydrogen bond with them. The new catalysts can also be applied to unfunctionalized substrates (i.e., substrates lacking hydrogen bond donors and acceptors).

3. Explore new reactions that can be catalyzed by amino acids.

4. Study structure-activity relationships in small peptide-catalyzed reactions and provide insights into catalytic mechanisms.