Comment on ‘Screening and identification of mimotopes of the major shrimp allergen tropomyosin using one-bead-one compound peptide libraries’

I’m writing to comment the article of Leung et al. entitled “Screening and identification of mimotopes of the major shrimp allergen tropomyosin using one-bead-one compound peptide libraries” appearing in this journal¹. The authors describe the synthesis of peptide libraries using the split and mix method and are citing as the source of this procedure (Reference 24) the paper of Lam et al.². This paper, however, appeared in 1991, while the split and mix method was published by Furka et al. three years earlier in 1988^3,4. The priority of Furka and his colleagues in introducing the split and mix method was acknowledged in later publications even by Lam and his colleagues. In one of the articles one can read: “The split synthesis method for generating libraries of this type was first described by Furka et al., who applied this method for synthesis of equimolar peptide mixtures. This synthetic method was later used to generate iterative libraries or one-bead-one-peptide libraries”⁵. In another paper the authors say this: “The synthesis of libraries with a unique compound on each solid-phase particle employs a simple principle for the generation of equimolar mixtures of peptides in solution that was first described by Furka. This principle was later applied to the construction of soluble libraries for iterative screening and to bead-based libraries screened with solid-phase-binding protocols”⁶.