Peptron's peptide-based drug discovery program focuses on achieving two goals: that have better efficacy, stability, and economical efficiency than existing protein or hormonal drugs where their in vivo function is known, and the for the discovery of new compounds. Peptron's competence has been demonstrated in the development of novel DDS technologies for enhancing stability and convenience of administering peptide-based drugs.
  Peptide consists of its building blocks, amino acids. A peptide is usually considered 50 amino acid residues or shorter whereas proteins contain more than 50 amino acids. The success probability rises as the length of peptide shortens in peptide-based drug discovery.
  Peptide-based therapeutics have many advantages over protein drugs.
Protein drugs are usually produced from animal cell lines or microorganisms that require a large amount of investment for manufacturing. In addition, unwanted impurities originating from the cell lines used for producing protein drugs are always a matter of concern and therefore strictly regulated. Some protein drugs have very short half-lives and must be stored and circulated under extremely low temperatures. In addition, long-term administration of a protein drug may result in the development of anti-protein antibodies in the patient's system that can either reduce the efficiency of the protein drug or place the patient at risk.
On the other hand, peptide-based drugs have proven efficacies and stabilities. Recent development of computer-based virtual designs enable relatively easy scale-up methods for mass production of peptide-based drugs. Peptides can be stored at room temperature and their production by chemical syntheses could reduce the cost of manufacturing. For these advantages, many peptide-based drugs have been developed and as of 2004, as many as 400 peptide-based drug candidates are under pre-clinical and clinical phase development.
 
Peptron is competes in peptide-based drug discovery through its peptide engineering technology that enables the synthesis of peptides with specific sequences or modifications, as well as process technology for scale-up of the compounds. Peptron has also developed the most effective cell-based assay systems and animal screening systems that are essential for testing peptide drug candidates. Therefore, Peptron is able to create the most efficient, stable, and novel peptide. The novel peptide drug candidate can be administered through sustained release formulation or pulmonary DDS technologies such as SmartDepot, SmartRod™, and SusTein™.
  Peptron has recently partnered with university research groups and pharmaceutical companies to successfully screen and develop drug candidates as cancer metastasis inhibitors and osteoporosis inhibitors with molecular weights of less than 1,200 Daltons. Enhanced stability studies are currently underway and our candidates are expected to enter pre-clinical evaluation in the near future.