Interest grows in peptide therapeutics as production techniques improve

The interest for peptide therapeutics has recently intensified, with a growth rate predicted to be quite significantly higher than for other active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) overall.

 

Modern manufacturing methods have contributed significantly to setting back peptides on the front stage of drug discovery and development. It is now possible to produce very large quantities of therapeutic peptides with tight specifications by using the wide possibilities offered by liquid phase and solid phase technologies, alone or in combination depending on the specific features of a given project.

Nevertheless, large scale peptide synthesis is an art that requires extensive experience and know how, not just because of the specific chemistry involved, but also because of the sometime tricky physicochemical behaviour of peptide fragments or elongated peptide strings.

Just a few dedicated companies worldwide have the necessary experience to successfully and cost-effectively undertake complex projects until full scale manufacturing is achieved.

Moreover, many peptides currently in the preclinical or clinical stages contain non-natural amino acids to make them more active or more stable; these special amino acids usually result from side chain modification or have the D configuration.

More recently, so-called Beta (symbol) amino acids have received increased attention for inclusion in peptide analogues, as a way to increase the stability of therapeutic peptides against enzymatic degradation.

In addition to its core business in large scale production of peptide APIs, Peptisyntha is developing large scale production methods for a full range of Beta (symbol) amino acids.

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Peptisyntha is based in Brussels, Belgium and Torrance, CA, USA. www.peptisyntha.com

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