Rational Improvement of the Affinity and Selectivity of Integrin Binding of Grafted Lasso Peptides

Integrins moderate diverse important functions in the human body and are promising targets in cancer therapy. Hence, the selective inhibition of specific integrins is of great medicinal interest. Here, we report the optimization of a grafted lasso peptide, yielding MccJ25(RGDF), which is a highly potent and selective alpha v beta 3 integrin inhibitor. Furthermore, its NMR structure was elucidated and employed in a molecular dynamics approach, revealing information about the integrin binding mode and selectivity profile of MccJ25(RGDF).