Thomas Böttcher and Stephan A. Sieber here review the use of β-lactams and β-lactones for activity-based protein profiling. ABPP uses small molecules to target the active site of specific enzymes and is useful for understanding protein targets of natural products, drugs or synthetic libraries. β-Lactams and β-lactones are ideal probes for ABPP due to their so-called ‘privileged structures’, i.e. they have a core scaffold that can be recognised by a wide range of enzyme classes and can be ‘fine-tuned to obtain customized target selectivity’.
Take a look at this detailed review, which provides an update to of the field of activity-based β-lactam and β-lactone probes and their applications in chemical biology:
β-Lactams and β-lactones as activity-based probes in chemical biology
Thomas Böttcher and Stephan A. Sieber
Med. Chem. Commun., 2012, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C2MD00275B
