Serum albumin has been recently identified as a useful carrier protein to help control distribution and protect potential peptidic drugs from metabolic degradation and clearance while retaining the desired physiol. response.The technol. described herein focuses on the formation of new drug entities derived from known peptides.The activated drug construct (also called Drug Affinity Complex, DAC-) exploits the unique reactivity of the sulfur atom on cysteine 34 of albumin (figure 1) upon intra venous administration, leading to the selective formation of a carbon sulfur bond.The half-lives increase from a few minutes for the native peptides to many hours (18-30 h) for the peptide-albumin conjugates in the rat.Representative results of DAC- derivatives of various clin. relevant peptides (GLP-1, Dynorphin A, Kringle 5) will be presented along with their reactivity toward serum albumin, identification of the conjugate species, improved stability and pharmacokinetics and selectivity of binding to albumin vs. other serum proteins.