High-Throughput Automated Microwave-Enhanced Peptide Synthesis

Summary

The ability to incorporate high-throughput automation for sequential microwave-assisted SPPS provides significant advantages for peptide production. Batch sizes up to 24 peptides can be synthesized in higher purity, with less waste, and extremely rapidly. Compared to parallel approaches, individual peptides can advantageously be moved to analysis and purification without waiting for the entire batch to be completed. The use of automated sequential microwave SPPS was demonstrated on a Liberty PRIME™ 2.0 HT24 with the rapid production of 20 distinct 16mer neo-antigen peptides.

Introduction

Modern peptide research is fast paced and often involves screening libraries of peptides to discover and develop functional peptides. Automated microwave-assisted SPPS has greatly reduced the time required to synthesize peptides, but synthesizing one peptide at a time requires user input between each sequence, if libraries need to be prepared. CEM’s microwave peptide synthesizers (Liberty™ 2.0, Liberty Blue™ 2.0, and Liberty PRIME™ 2.0) can be paired with an HT transfer system, to allow the user to queue and automatically synthesize up to 24 peptides consecutively. Batches of individual resins are pre-loaded onto the HT for each peptide in the queue, and then automatically transferred to the Liberty synthesizer for peptide synthesis.

Automatic resin transfer removes the need for user input in between each queued peptide, maximizing productivity during the work-day and allows multiple peptides to run overnight. HT systems are designed to transfer 4, 12, or 24 batches of resin per queue, with ideal usage, based on the cycle times of the synthesizer. The fastest synthesizer, Liberty PRIME 2.0, can be equipped with HT4, HT12, or HT24, depending on the needs of the researcher. Liberty Blue 2.0 can be equipped with HT4, or HT12, while the base model Liberty 2.0 can be equipped with an HT4. Furthermore, the Liberty PRIME 2.0 synthesizer features extra reagent and bottle capacity for running large batches with the HT24 setup, without refilling, along with the optional ability to be used in cGMP settings for peptide production.