1. Departments of Cardiometabolic Disease Biology, Discovery Pharmaceutical Sciences, In Vitro Pharmacology, and Discovery Chemistry, Merck Research Laboratories, Kenilworth, New Jersey.
2. Lead Optimization Chemistry, Merck Research Laboratories, Rahway, New Jersey.

The 7-amido-4-thifluoromethylcoumarin (AFC) containing fluorescence substrate, CH3SO2-cyclohexyl-Gly-Gly-Arg-AFC (cyclohexyl-G-G-R-AFC) was custom synthesized by CPC Scientific (Sunnyvale, CA, USA)..

• In Vitro Pharmacology and Cardiometabolic Diseases, Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, New Jersey

"The 7-amido-4-thifluoromethylcoumarin (AFC) containing fluorescence substrate, CH3SO2-cyclohexyl-Gly-Gly-Arg-AFC (cyclohexylG-G-R-AFC) was custom synthesized by CPC Scientific (Sunnyvale, CA, USA)"

PD-L1 binding peptide, WL12, was custom synthesized by CPC Scientific (Sunnyvale, CA) with >95% purity.

"The cell-penetrating peptide (RXR)4XB, where R is arginine, X is aminohexanoic acid, and B is beta-alanine, was synthesized using standard FMOC chemistry and purified to >95% purity at CPC Scientific (Sunnyvale, CA) and used without further purification."

1. Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Synthetic and Functional Biomolecules Center, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
2. Department of Global Biotherapeutics Technologies, Pfizer Inc., Cambridge, MA 02140, USA
3. School of Life Sciences, Nanjing University, China
4. Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences, Beijing, China

"The Biotin-C6-LELPETGG-NH2, GGGY-Lys(Biotin)-NH2, and GGG-Lys(N3)-NH2 reagents were synthesized by CPC Scientific."

"The SSTR2a (PRL-2903) was purchased by CPC Scientific (Sunnyvale, CA, USA) and the dose (10 mg/kg body mass) approximated that given in our prior studies [25–27]. The antagonist was dissolved in saline and given in a 2 ml/kg volume."

"The custom-made thrombin-sensitive peptide azidoacetyl-AK(5FAM)-GALVPRGSAGK(CPQ2)-NH2 was obtained from CPC Scientific (Sunnyvale, CA) for click reactions to anti-CD61, as previously described."

1. Pfizer Worldwide Research & Development, Pfizer, Inc., Groton, Connecticut 06340, United States
2. CPC Scientific, Hangzhou, P.R. China

This paper introduces the unnatural amino acids m-Abc2K and o-Abc2K as nanometer-sized building blocks for the creation of water-soluble macrocycles with well-defined shapes. m-Abc2K and o-Abc2K are homologues of the nanometer-sized amino acid Abc2K, which we recently introduced for the synthesis of water-soluble molecular rods of precise length. [J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2007, 129, 7272]. Abc2K is linear (180°), m-Abc2K creates a 120° angle, and o-Abc2K creates a 60° angle. m-Abc2K and o-Abc2K are derivatives of 3’-amino-[1,1’-biphenyl]-4-carboxylic acid and 2’-amino-[1,1’-biphenyl]-4-carboxylic acid, with two propyloxyammonium side chains for water solubility.

This paper introduces the unnatural amino acid Abc2K as a nanometer-length building block for the creation of water-soluble molecular rods of exceptional size. Abc2K is a water-soluble variant of the unnatural amino acid 4’-amino-[1,1’-biphenyl]-4-carboxylic acid (Abc) with lysinelike propyloxyammonium side chains at the 2- and 5-positions. The protected building block Fmoc-Abc2K(Boc)-OH (1) can be used in standard Fmoc-based solid-phase peptide synthesis to create water-soluble rodlike peptides in nanometer unit lengths up to at least ten nanometers.