and, to a certain extent, also mixed a,b-peptides, are resistant to degradation by a variety of proteolytic enzymes that rapidly degrade natural a-peptides. This is one of many characteristics that make b-peptides an attractive class of compounds for drug-discovery studies. On the other hand, modern organometallic reactions such as the Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling have become standard tools in industry laboratories to derivatize side chains of a-peptidic compounds to build up libraries of unnatural peptides. Combining both features, we prepared (4-bromo)-b 3 -homophenylalanine derivatives 3 -5 and 12 as precursors for Suzuki-Miyaura couplings. From these bromo compounds, we synthesized biarylsubstituted b-homoamino acids 6, and analogs 13 and 15 of the anti-AIDS drug Saquinavir.Introduction. -The Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling reaction is a powerful synthetic tool for C,C-coupling reactions of borono derivatives with aryl or vinyl halides or triflates 5 ), as the reaction is unaffected by the presence of H 2 O, tolerates a broad range of functional groups, proceeds regio-and stereoselectively in good yields, and nontoxic inorganic side-products are easily removed. The reaction has been used with (4-borono)-[2], (4-bromo)- [3], and (4-iodo)phenylalanine [4] [5], serine-derived alkylboronic acids [6], and tyrosine triflates [3] [7] for the preparation of phenylalanine derivatives, which are modified in the 4-aryl position. These unnatural amino acids have been incorporated into small peptides to increase both their pharmacological potential and metabolic stability [8].