HiPEG and CyPEG are designed to allow PEGylation of polyhistidine sequences or terminal cysteine residues.
PolyTherics completed a £3 million (roughly $4.71 million) investment round led by Imperial Innovations Group. The funds will be used to further develop and commercialize its latest PEGylation platforms, HiPEG™ and CyPEG, for the development of what the firm terms “biobetter” protein and peptide products.
PolyTherics is already exploiting its site-specific TheraPEG™ PEGylation technology both through licensing deals with the biopharma industry and for the development of products in-house. TheraPEG allows the targeted PEGylation of proteins and peptides through disulfide bonds.
The HiPEG and CyPEG platforms have been developed to enable the PEGylation of synthetic or recombinant biologics such as novel proteins or peptides. HiPEG is designed to allow the specific attachment of PEG molecules to polyhistidine sequences that are often fused to proteins for affinity purification purposes.
The firm says that it is already witnessing considerable interest in HiPEG from companies developing novel proteins with as yet untapped therapeutic potential and is looking to develop the technology further in partnership.
CyPEG is designed to target PEG attachment to terminal cysteine residues on proteins or peptides. The technology has been developed to allow the production of extremely stable PEG-biologic conjugates, PolyTherics states. The firm claims that the technology is already showing the potential to improve established PEGylation methodologies.
