The American Peptide Symposium 2011

This year the 22^nd edition of the very popular APS annual symposium took place from the 24th-30th June in sunny San Diego at the Sheraton Hotel and Marina on Harbor Island. San Diego definitely deserves its title of America’s Finest City: There is a lot to see and do, from Sea World to the beautiful Balboa Park and the zoo, Old Town and Little Italy, downtown to the Gaslamp and finally the Seaport and Coronado Island… Back to the peptide world, the theme of the symposium was “Building Bridges” (not disulphides, bridges between disciplines) to symbolize the role of peptide science in an increasing number of disciplines. Now the figures, 73 lectures to find out about the latest applications of peptides in material science, bioconjugation, therapeutics, cancer… 62 exhibitors split between the Pavilion and the Nautilus where the posters (430 According to the programme!) were also displayed.

What we liked:

• The friendly atmosphere: the peptide world is a small world and the APS meeting is a fantastic opportunity to network and catch up with friends
• The quality of the speakers (some very distinguished)
•  Jennifer Ottesen’s² synthesis of acetylated Histone H3 using a Dawson Dbz resin with alloc protecting groups (to avoid the nasty peptide branching)
•  A lot of Click chemistry
•  Jean Chmielewski’s³ functionalised collagen to produce spheres, discs or fibers
•  Christian Becker’s⁴ optimised synthesis of a protein with 3 transmembrane domains.
•  San Diego

What we didn’t like:

•  The packed lunches! Nothing memorable…
•   The tent, so far from the lecture hall.

Useful links:

¹ Ashaf Brik’s lab at Ben Gurion University
² Jennifer Ottesen’s lab at Ohio State University
³ Jean Chmielewski’s lab at Purdue University
⁴ Christian Becker – Center for Integrated Protein Science Munich