GenScript has made a new addition to its collection of early drug discovery services which provide a means to circumvent one problem that troubles peptide drug discovery
The peptide leads involved in such studies are highly susceptible to degradation from common endogenous proteases.
One common way to sidestep this problem is to build the desired lead out of D-amino acids.
While only a few are completely non-immunogenic, D-peptides consistently tend to be less immunogenic than their L-peptide counterparts.
However, this method requires the construction of full D-peptide libraries, which can be prohibitively costly.
GenScript takes a different approach that significantly diminishes the cost of mirror-image peptide drug discovery.
GenScript constructs libraries of easily amendable L-peptides, which are then screened with mirror-image D-molecules of the target proteins.
First, the D-enantiomer of the target protein is chemically synthesised and used to isolate natural L-peptide leads from a phage display library or chemically synthesised peptide library.
Then the D-enantiomers of the most potent leads are produced for optimisation and clinical trials.
The service covers the entire early stage of peptide drug discovery, including library screening and functional assays.
GenScript is currently the only company in the industry to provide such a service.
It is expected to be relevant to the synthesis and purification of D-enantiomers of target proteins, the synthesis and screening of L-peptide libraries, the construction and screening of L-peptide phage display libraries, and the synthesis of D-enantiomers of isolated peptide leads, all of which have applications in peptide drug discovery.
