Tom Fiala (@tomfialab.bsky.social)

TWeeP (This Week's Paper): Happy new year! I'm back with my weekly highlights after the holiday break. Let's kick off 2025 with some nice bioconjugation work by Esteve, Koniev, Lehn et al. in #JACS. Dynamic imine formation triggers proximity-driven SNAr on proteins. pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1...

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Selective Protein (Post-)modifications through Dynamic Covalent Chemistry: Self-activated SNAr Reactions SNAr reactions were remarkably accelerated using a pretargeting and activating unit based on dynamic covalent chemistry (DCvC). A Cys attack at the C–F bond on the aromatic ring of salicylaldehyde derivatives was only observed upon iminium formation with a neighboring Lys residue of model small peptides. Such self-activation was ascribed to the stronger electron-withdrawing capability of the iminium bond with respect to that of the parent aldehyde that stabilized the transition state of the reaction, together with the higher preorganization of the reactive groups in the cationic aldiminium species. This approach was further applied for the functionalization of two antibodies. In both cases, the presence of the aldehyde group in close proximity to the reactive C–F bond resulted in a noteworthy increase in bioconjugation yields, with excellent chemo-selectivity. Whereas the modification of an IgG1 antibody led to stochastic product distributions, microenvironment selectivity was noted when employing IgG4, in line with the lower number of Lys residues in the hinge region of the latter. Additionally, the postfunctionalization of the modified antibodies was attained through the dynamic covalent exchange of the tethered iminium derivative with hydrazides, representing an unprecedented “tag and modify” selective bioconjugation strategy based on DCvC. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.4c15421