ProteinQure Collaborates with AstraZeneca to Design Novel Peptide Therapeutics

TORONTO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–ProteinQure, a leader in computational protein drug discovery, announces a collaboration with the global biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to apply structure-based design to the creation of therapeutic libraries with the aim of accelerating the research and development of peptide therapeutics.

Peptide therapeutics have unique properties that make them highly effective against some disease targets outside the scope of traditional small molecule and antibody modalities. However, due to the number of peptide variations, very few of these potential therapeutics have been studied. Integrating high-accuracy biophysical models and machine learning, it is possible to explore this vast therapeutic space and design peptide libraries with broad applicability in drug discovery.

The collaboration will leverage ProteinQure’s expertise in computational methods and structure-based drug design. AstraZeneca will conduct experimental validation, drawing on the company’s extensive expertise in biologics.

“We are excited to collaborate with AstraZeneca to demonstrate the application of our technology on a large scale. By combining ProteinQure’s proprietary computational tools with AstraZeneca’s ability to refine and validate millions of therapeutic candidates in high-throughput, we can rapidly determine therapeutic leads outside the scope of conventional synthetic antibody libraries. State-of-the-art computational tools have not been fully explored in biologics R&D and we are excited to partner with AstraZeneca with the aim of discovering novel therapeutic leads for some of the most challenging drug targets faced by the industry,” said Chris Ing, CSO, ProteinQure.

“The combination of designed peptide libraries, based on ProteinQure’s computational methods, with our advanced capabilities in display technologies will help us harness the potential of this therapeutic class. AstraZeneca continues to collaborate with cutting-edge companies in our ambition to discover novel treatments and increase the speed at which we can bring treatments to patients,” said Tristan Vaughan, Vice President Antibody Discovery & Protein Engineering, R&D, AstraZeneca.