An efficient gel‐phase synthesis of peptides on a high capacity flexible crosslinked polystyrene support: comparison with Merrifield resin

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Abstract
A highly solvating copolymer was prepared in high yield by introducing a flexible crosslinker, 1,4‐butanedioldimethacrylate, into the polystyrene matrix by a free radical aqueous suspension polymerization. A 2 mol% crosslinked resin showed rigidity and mechanical characteristics comparable to those of divinylbenzene‐crosslinked polystyrene (Merrifield resin, DVB‐PS) support. Swelling and solvation characteristics of the new resin, BDDMA‐PS, were much higher than DVB‐PS support in all solvents used for solid phase peptide synthesis. The diacrylate crosslinks in the resin network were found to be highly stable even after 48 h treatment with neat TFA, 6 N HCl and 6 N KOH at 110°C. To demonstrate the usefulness of the new resin in high capacity peptide synthesis, a typical difficult peptide, acyl carrier protein (ACP) fragment (65–74), was synthesized on commercially available 1 mol% crosslinked DVB‐PS and 2 mol% crosslinked BDDMA‐PS resins under identical conditions. A protocol using NMP/DMSO mediated coupling was employed for chain assembly. The yield and purity of the product from BDDMA‐PS resin was higher than when the DVB‐PS resin was used. The mechanistic reason behind the synthetic efficiency of the new resin was found to be its ability to induce random coil conformation to the growing peptide chains. Copyright © 2002 European Peptide Society and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.