It is a privilege to be able to contribute to this volume in which Professor Zervas’ friends, students, and colleagues have joined together to honor him and his remarkable contributions to peptide chemistry. Although I did not know him until after his days in the Bergmann Laboratory at the Rockefeller Institute, I can claim the distinction of now working in those very same rooms that they occupied back in the mid-1930s. Like all peptide chemists, I am greatly indebted to Professor Zervas, having depended so heavily on the carbobenzoxy group and on the various modified urethan protecting groups which have been direct extensions of the revolutionary advance that Bergmann and Zervas made.

Solid-phase peptide synthesis.

Synthesis of macrolides

It has been a quarter of a century since Merrifield's initial report on solid-phase peptide synthesis. The field has matured significantly in recent years with a better understanding of the underlying chemistry. This is reflected by new, milder orthogonal protection schemes and more efficient coupling methods, some of which have been incorporated into automated systems. Advances in purification, especially high performance liquid chromatography, have had a major impact. The efficacy of these improvements has been demonstrated by an impressive litany of applications to biological problems.

Solid-phase peptide synthesis: a silver anniversary report

Convergent solid-phase peptide synthesis

This Review describes the basic concepts that have guided our exploration of new chemical reactions by giving examples of results from my research group. Our strategy of carrying out research is to investigate three to four different topics at a time so we can gather as many results as possible. These may at first appear unrelated to each other but may have the potential to be united into a greater hypothesis after repeated feedback. Three scenarios from our research are presented: the "oxidative-reductive condensation reaction" devised in 1960, which after an interval of nearly 40 years brought forth the new concept of using compounds of structure Ph(2)POR as reducing reagents; the "TiCl(4)-aldol reaction" of 1973 that eventually led to the present "base-promoted aldol reaction" through a chain of ideas; and the "glycosylation reaction using fluorosugars" from 1984 which recently bloomed into "stereocontrolled glycosylation". Thus, it can be said that by reviewing what we had done before, we were able to expand on it to achieve new outcomes.

Manabu Suzuki

Papers

Peptide synthesis via the oxidation-reduction condensation by the use of 2,2′-dipyridyldisulfide as an oxidant