2.2.2. Thiol-Michael addition
A less common approach to the modification of polypeptides is the use of thiol-Michael addition reactions. This type of reaction is very common for small molecule or other types of polymer systems, but less typical for the main-chain functionalization of polypeptides [34]. In general, these types of reactions are much more common for bioconjugation (attaching synthetic molecules to biological ones), a recent example of which was shown by Jones et al. [35]. In a one-pot process, they first reduced the disulfide bridge of salmon calcitonin (a 32 amino acid calcitropic hormone) to yield the free thiol (cysteines in nature rarely occur in non-dimer configurations), and they were then were able to react the free thiols with an acrylate-endcapped PEG (7 equivalents, molar mass of ∼475 g mol−1) using tris(2-carboxyethyl)phosphine as the water soluble catalyst in 500 mM PBS buffer (pH of 6.5) at ambient temperatures for 2 h. The reaction was quantitative (confirmed by MALDI-ToF), and the PEGylated calcitonin retained its original activity (lowering plasma calcium when injected intravenously). This is a good example of a platform that can easily be extended to other biological molecules because of the ease of synthesis.