{"doi":"10.52843/cassyni.1d2qzv","title":"Celebrating Professor George Barany's Half Century in Science","abstract":"Opening Remarks This webinar is a companion to a special issue published in International Journal of Peptide Research and Therapeutics, which has 17 articles in areas influenced by the scientific career of George Barany, Distinguished McKnight University Professor Emeritus of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. The BPTI story: From the slow exchange core to intrinsically disordered proteins This retrospective is presented as part of the celebration of the retirement of my postdoctoral co-advisor George Barany, who together with my primary mentor Clare Woodward, bridged peptide chemistry and biophysics to make new discoveries in protein folding that ushered in the field of intrinsically disordered proteins. I will summarize the status of the field when I joined the lab, reminisce on the discoveries we made using interdisciplinary research, and explain why they are important to this day. We focused on BPTI as the hero of the show, a small protein that inhibits trypsin and was one of the few proteins that was extensively studied in the 1980s to 1990s as a model to understand protein folding. Gathering this information brought back fond memories of hot debates and risky endeavors that paved the way for me to transition my work from model systems to large molecular machines. Peptide Hormones to Transformative Medicines A century of peptide sciences has illuminated that endogenous peptides often make poor drugs and at times misdirected what otherwise proved possible through chemical optimization. The advances in analytical, synthetic, and medicinal peptide chemistry continue to serve an indispensable role in the advancement of biochemistry, pharmacology, and therapeutic application of peptide hormones. In concert with multiple collaborators, we have championed the simultaneous recruitment of numerous physiological mechanisms optimized for pharmacological purposes to address the heterogeneity constituted by the multiple diseases associated with advanced age. We have integrated classical small and large molecule-based pharmacology across academic and commercial laboratories to achieve transformative therapeutic outcomes. The results have tangentially promoted the progression of medicinal approaches that restore health in overt disease, to those that can be used prophylactically to enhance strength, cognition, and longevity. The lecture will exemplify chemistry advancing our understanding of biology to promote enhanced health. Disulfide Peptides to Macrocycles and Orthogonal Chemistry: How George Barany Impacted My Chemistry and Career Dr. George Barany has had never-ending contributions to the field of peptide science and organic chemistry. These contributions may currently be termed “chemical biology,” but nonetheless have broad and far reaching impact to science. Not only has Dr. Barany contributed to highly meaningful science and research, he has also helped mentor and advance the knowledge and careers of his contemporaries and successors. George’s contribution to my research, career, and successes began when I was a graduate student in the laboratory of Dr. Victor J. Hruby (1990’s) and has continued to the present day. In this talk, it is my pleasure to share and give tribute to how George has influenced my life and the research performed in my laboratory for over three decades. Synthetic Studies of Diabetes-Associated Proinsulin Variants Toxic protein misfolding is the hallmark of diverse diseases. Our studies focus on the oxidative folding and misfolding of variant human proinsulins (86 residues) associated with a monogenic diabetes syndrome. Proinsulin, the biosynthetic precursor of insulin, contains six invariant cysteines shared by a superfamily of vertebrate hormones and growth factors and by a more distant class of invertebrate polypeptides. The clinical mutations of interest impair the efficiency of native disulfide pairing in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) of pancreatic beta-cells, leading to chronic ER stress and e","journal":null,"year":2025,"id":579650,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9216,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":false,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":413611,"name":"Elisar Barbar","orcid":"0000-0003-4892-5259","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":63185,"name":"Richard D. DiMarchi","orcid":"0000-0003-0220-4085","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":621198,"name":"Carrie Haskell‐Luevano","orcid":"0000-0002-6783-5972","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":338990,"name":"Michael A. Weiss","orcid":"0000-0003-1325-1610","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1305058,"name":"George Bárány","orcid":"0000-0002-6373-2706","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":791915,"name":"Fernando Alberício","orcid":"0000-0002-8946-0462","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":10,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:58:34.718602Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}