Publications by Christian Heinis

Related publications (85)

Large Libraries of Structurally Diverse Macrocycles Suitable for Membrane Permeation

Christian Heinis, Alessandro Angelini, Alexander Lund Nielsen, Mischa Schüttel, Manuel Leonardo Merz, Xinjian Ji, Anne Sofie Luise Zarda, Ganesh Kumar Mothukuri, Zsolt Bognár, Edward Jeffrey Will

Macrocycles offer an attractive format for drug development due to their good binding properties and potential to cross cell membranes. To efficiently identify macrocyclic ligands for new targets, methods for the synthesis and screening of large combinator ...

Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH2024

Phage Selection of Cyclic Peptides for Application in Research and Drug Development

Christian Heinis, Xudong Kong, Kaycie Marie Butler

Cyclic peptides can bind to protein targets with high affinities and selectivities, which makes them an attractive modality for the development of research reagents and therapeutics. Additional properties, including low inherent toxicity, efficient chemica ...

American Chemical Society2017

De novo development of proteolytically resistant therapeutic peptides for oral administration

Christian Heinis, Florence Pojer, Luciano Andres Abriata, Xudong Kong, Kaycie Marie Butler, Vanessa Carle

The oral administration of peptide drugs is hampered by their metabolic instability and limited intestinal uptake. Here, we describe a method for the generation of small target-specific peptides (less than 1,600 Da in size) that resist gastrointestinal pro ...

2020

Development of potent and selective S. aureus sortase A inhibitors Based on Peptide Macrocycles

Christian Heinis, Inmaculada Rentero Rebollo, Davide Bertoldo

Sortases are transpeptidase enzymes that anchor surface proteins, including virulence factors, to the cell wall of Gram-positive bacteria, and they are potential targets for the development of anti-infective agents. While several large compound libraries w ...

2016

Measuring In Vivo Protein Half-Life

Didier Trono, Kai Johnsson, Christian Heinis, Sandra Eloise Kjeldsen, Sonia Verp, Isabelle Barde, Karolina Bojkowska

Protein turnover critically influences many biological functions, yet methods have been lacking to assess this parameter in vivo. Here, we demonstrate how chemical labeling of SNAP-tag fusion proteins can be exploited to measure the half-life of resident i ...

Elsevier2011

Discovery of De Novo Macrocycle Inhibitors of Histone Deacetylase 11

Christian Heinis, Alexander Lund Nielsen, Edward Jeffrey Will, Anne Sofie Luise Zarda

Histone deacetylase (HDAC) enzymes are epigenetic regulators that affect diverse protein function by removing acyl groups from lysine side chains throughout the proteome. The most recently discovered human isozyme, HDAC11, differs from other HDACs in subst ...

2025

Chemical Biology Approaches to Membrane Homeostasis and Function

Kai Johnsson, Christian Heinis, Gerardo Turcatti, Luc Reymond

The study of membranes is at a turning point. New theories about membrane structure and function have recently been proposed, however, new technologies, combining chemical, physical, and biochemical approaches are necessary to test these hypotheses. In par ...

2011

Identification of target-binding peptide motifs by high-throughput sequencing of phage-selected peptides

Christian Heinis, Inmaculada Rentero Rebollo, Vanessa Baeriswyl, Michal Sabisz

High-throughput sequencing was previously applied to phage-selected peptides in order to gain insight into the abundance and diversity of isolated peptides. Herein we developed a procedure to efficiently compare the sequences of large numbers of phage-sele ...

Oxford Univ Press2014

Novel inhibitors of kallikrein proteases and uses thereof

Christian Heinis, Alessandro Zorzi, Patrick Andreas Gonschorek

The present invention relates to a cyclic inhibitor of a kallikrein protease comprising or consisting of (I) the peptide (X1 (X2)(X3)R(X4)(X5)(X6)(X7)(X8)(X9)(X10)(X11) (Formula (X)), wherein (X1) is present or absent and, is preferably present, and if pre ...

2021

Solid-phase peptide synthesis on disulfide-linker resin followed by reductive release affords pure thiol-functionalized peptides

Peter Matei Frisius Pânzar, Christian Heinis, Alexander Lund Nielsen, Manuel Leonardo Merz, Ganesh Kumar Mothukuri, Zsolt Bognár

Thiol groups are suitable handles for site-selectively modifying, immobilizing or cyclizing individual peptides or entire peptide libraries. A limiting step in producing the thiol-functionalized peptides is the chromatographic purification, which is partic ...

2022

Phage Selection of Bicyclic Peptide Ligands of the Notch1 Receptor

Freddy Radtke, Christian Heinis, Charlotte Marie Urech-Varenne

Precise regulation of the Notch signaling pathway is crucial, as increases or deficiencies in signaling are associated with diseases, including a wide range of cancers. Recent studies have demonstrated that monoclonal antibodies that bind and stabilize the ...

Wiley-Blackwell2015

Synthesis and direct assay of large macrocycle diversities by combinatorial late-stage modification at picomole scale

Christian Heinis, Gerardo Turcatti, Alessandro Angelini, Jonathan Patrice Vesin, Julien Bortoli Chapalay, Manuel Leonardo Merz, Sevan Mleh Habeshian, Mischa Schüttel, Ganesh Kumar Mothukuri, Gontran Sangouard, Cristina Diaz Perlas, Zsolt Bognár

Macrocycles have excellent potential as therapeutics due to their ability to bind challenging targets. However, generating macrocycles against new targets is hindered by a lack of large macrocycle libraries for high-throughput screening. To overcome this, ...

Nature Research2022

Encoded libraries of chemically modified peptides

Christian Heinis

The use of powerful technologies for generating and screening DNA-encoded protein libraries has helped drive the development of proteins as pharmaceutical ligands. However the development of peptides as pharmaceutical ligands has been more limited. Althoug ...

Elsevier2015

Strategies to prolong the plasma residence time of peptide drugs

Christian Heinis, Lisa Pollaro

Peptides are an attractive class of molecules for the development of therapeutics because they combine unique properties such as high binding affinity, excellent target specificity, low toxicity and a relatively small mass. However, the short in vivo half- ...

2010

Peptide macrocycle inhibitor of coagulation factor XII with subnanomolar affinity and high target selectivity

Christian Heinis, Jonas Alfred Karl Wilbs, Simon Jan Middendorp

Factor XII (FXII) is a plasma protease that has emerged in recent years as a potential target to treat or prevent pathological thrombosis, to inhibit contact activation in extracorporeal circulation, and to treat the swelling disorder hereditary angioedema ...

2017

High-Density Immobilization of TCEP on Silica Beads for Efficient Disulfide Reduction and Thiol Alkylation in Peptides

Christian Heinis

Tris-(2-carboxyethyl)phosphine (TCEP) linked to agarose beads is widely used for reducing disulfide bridges in proteins and peptides. The immobilization of TCEP on beads allows efficient removal after reduction to prevent its reaction with alkylating reage ...

2023

Dithiol amino acids can structurally shape and enhance the ligand-binding properties of polypeptides

Christian Heinis, Florence Pojer, Rudolf Hovius, Shiyu Chen, Ranganath Gopalakrishnan

The disulfide bonds that form between two cysteine residues are important in defining and rigidifying the structures of proteins and peptides. In polypeptides containing multiple cysteine residues, disulfide isomerization can lead to multiple products with ...

Nature Publishing Group2014

Phage selection of peptide macrocycles against b-catenin to interfere with Wnt signaling

Christian Heinis, Jörg Hülsken, Davide Bertoldo, Pierre Vincent Dessen, Maola Khan Mohammad Golam

Upregulation of b-catenin, the primary mediator of the Wnt signaling pathway, plays an important role in the tumorigenesis of several types of human cancer. Targeting b-catenin to interfere with its ability to serve as a translational co-activator is consi ...

2016

Towards the Development of Orally Available Peptide Therapeutics

Christian Heinis, Xudong Kong

Peptides have a number of attractive properties that make them an interesting modality for drug development, including their ability to bind challenging targets, their high target specificity, and their non-toxic metabolic products. However, a major limita ...

2021

Phage display libraries of differently sized bicyclic peptides

Christian Heinis, Alessandro Angelini, Inmaculada Rentero Rebollo

Phage selections with combinatorial libraries of uniformly sized bicyclic peptides have recently yielded potent and selective binders of several protein targets. In this work we varied in a combinatorial fashion the ring sizes of bicyclic peptides in phage ...

Royal Soc Chemistry2013