Phosphine-mediated one-pot thiol-ene click'' approach to polymer-protein conjugates

We employ water-soluble organic phosphines as key reagents in a one-pot synthetic protocol where a (poly)peptide disulfide bridge is first reduced followed by subsequent reaction of the two thiols in situ with poly(monomethoxy ethylene glycol)-(meth) acrylates (p(mPEG)(M)A); we use salmon calcitonin (sCT) as a disulfide bridge-containing peptide, which contains a disulfide bridge-Cys1-Cys7-that can be reduced to give two sulfhydryl units available for thiol functionalisation; bioactivity is retained.