Intracellular Delivery Of Functional Cargos Using Cell Penetrating Peptide Motifs

Biologics such as cyclic peptides, proteins, and nucleic acids are a class of therapeutics that have the ability to modulate diverse undruggable targets. Biologics can bind to flat and large surfaces involved in undruggable protein-protein interactions (PPIs) in comparable to small molecules. However, applications of biologics are restricted by their inefficient penetration to the cell membrane to reach their targets in the cytosol. Cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) are short peptide sequences that can effectively deliver biologically active cargo into cells. This work is focused on utilizing cyclic CPPs as delivery tools for functional biologics including cyclic peptides and proteins targeting intracellular PPIs.