Abstract
Inhibiting the histone H3-ASF1 (anti-silencing function 1) protein-protein interaction (PPI) represents a potential approach for treating numerous cancers. As an α-helix-mediated PPI, constraining the key histone H3 helix (residues 118-135) is a strategy through which chemical probes might be elaborated to test this hypothesis. In this work, variant H3(118-135) peptides bearing pentenylglycine residues at the i and i+4 positions were constrained by olefin metathesis. Biophysical analyses revealed that promotion of a bioactive helical conformation depends on the position at which the constraint is introduced, but that the potency of binding towards ASF1 is unaffected by the constraint and instead that enthalpy-entropy compensation occurs.