Solid-phase synthesis of neuroactive spider–wasp hybrid toxin analogues using a backbone amide linker

Abstract

Polyamine toxins isolated from the venoms of spiders and wasps and their synthetic analogues are uncompetitive antagonists of ligand-gated ionotropic receptors in the central- and peripheral nervous systems, and have proved valuable as tools for the investigation of receptor structure and function. In the present letter we describe the efficient solid-phase synthesis (SPS) of novel hybrid toxins using a BAL resin. This strategy enables the bidirectional construction of toxin molecules and has a potential in SPS of chemically diverse libraries of toxin analogues for structure–activity relationship (SAR) studies.