Guanidine Motif in Biologically Active Peptides

Abstract

In the past decade, guanidines have attracted attention as valuable hydrogen bond-based catalysts while they have long been considered as organic superbases with a broad scope of synthetic applicability. Their easy modification has also expanded their capacity to form complexes with a wide range of metal salts as effective metal scavengers. All these attractive aspects have promoted a huge growth in the field of organic synthesis involving guanidines and examples of such reactions have been collected in numerous reviews and some books. Moreover, this structural motif is also present in a large number of natural products and biologically active compounds that exhibit appealing properties and play important roles in medicinal chemistry. In this highlight, we will only cover the synthesis and properties of biologically active guanidine-containing peptides reported in the past 3 years.