Using Fluorous Amino Acids to Modulate the Biological Activity of an Antimicrobial Peptide

Leap frog: Antimicrobial peptides based on the structure of the magainin peptides from the African clawed frog have shown great promise as therapeutic agents. However their efficacy in vivo is limited by their susceptibility to proteolysis. We show that incorporating the fluorous amino acid hexafluoroleucine into a magainin analogue (see scheme) dramatically improves stability to proteolysis while retaining biological activity.