The practical utility of synthetic tumor suppressor peptides: a personal retrospective on 25 years.

In this brief survey, I look back upon a quarter of a century of my personal experience with synthetic peptides. Thereby, I focus on major steps in the design and experimental exploration of peptides that I have derived from the retinoblastoma tumor suppressor protein (RB). Along this way, both Merrifield's solid phase peptide synthesis method and collaborations with established investigators in the peptide and cancer research fields have played an important role.