Companies Evergreen Discovery and Orbit Discovery have entered into a collaboration to identify specific cell targeting peptides and advance the development of novel radiopharmaceuticals.
The agreement covers activities including designing peptide libraries, hit identification and hit validation to confirm cell surface binding properties.
The radiopharmaceuticals market is rapidly expanding with the development of a variety of targeting moieties. These moieties allow for specific binding to a tumour target of interest, thereby localising the treatment to diseased tissues.
Peptides are increasingly seen as a valuable delivery option, as their specificity, stability and rapid clearance has the potential to reduce off-target toxicities.
The collaboration will use Orbit’s peptide display technologies to find peptide leads specific to tumour related targets of interest. The platform will perform in vitro transcription translation from DNA-encoded libraries on beads. This allows for screening of libraries using fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS)-based methodologies. Evergreen will focus on subsequent development of the peptides for clinical use.
Dr Thomas Reiner, Chief Scientific Officer, Evergreen Discovery, commented: “The requirement for more direct screening technologies is key to successful drug development and we see Orbit as a steppingstone in attaining our goals in a rapid timeframe.”
