A New Technology: Solid Phase Peptide Synthesis

Abstract

In the nineteen-fifties peptide synthesis advanced by leaps and bounds but those who participated in the major endeavors of the period, such as building molecules of the size of angiotensin, oxytocin, gramicidin S or α-MSH, keenly felt that the demands of the task in effort and time approached the limits acceptable by most investigators. While in the next decade chains of twenty or even more amino acid residues could be constructed, among them corticotropin, a 39-peptide, the synthesis of such large molecules was looked upon as a rather forbidding exercise. Hence new methods that would bring about some relief in the synthesis of long peptide chains appeared highly desirable.