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Protagonist Therapeutics is a biotechnology company pursuing the discovery and development of target oral peptides as well differentiated alternatives to antibodies, and also as new chemical entities (NCEs) against those targets and life threatening diseases for which suitable small molecule and/or biologic options are not available. Peptides typically suffer from limitations of poor proteolytic stability and therefore find scarce therapeutic utility that is largely limited to ‘injectable drugs’. Protagonist’s technology platform is aimed at overcoming these restrictions and expanding the scope of peptide therapeutics to address unmet needs. Specific emphasis is placed on identifying ‘orally stable’ scaffolds and/or engineering oral stability characteristics onto them. The platform has been optimized over the years and involves synergistic integration of rational drug design, diversity oriented computational tools, phage display libraries, recombinant peptide expression, ex vivo oral stability methods, and peptide/medicinal chemistry techniques. This activity has led to the identification of ‘privileged scaffolds’ with favorable oral stability characteristics. Furthermore, the technology platform is well suited both for de novo discovery against a target and optimization around a given chemical starting point.
Hepion Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of pleiotropic drug therapy for treatment of chronic liver disease. T
Aura Biosciences is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing virus-like drug conjugates (VDC), a novel class of therapies, for the treatment of multiple oncology indications. At Aura, our mission is to deliver meaningful therapeutic benefit to a range of cancer indications with high unmet need in which we believe we can establish a new standard of care. We are driven by our passion and commitment to science and the patients battling cancer who are relying on us to pioneer these new therapies. We are focusing the initial development of our VDC technology platform to treat tumors of high unmet need in ocular and urologic oncology. Belzupacap sarotalocan (bel-sar), our first VDC candidate, is being developed for the first-line treatment of early-stage choroidal melanoma, a rare disease with no drugs approved. Beyond early-stage choroidal melanoma, we are developing bel-sar in additional ocular oncology indications, including choroidal metastasis. Leveraging our VDCs` broad tumor targeting capabilities, we have also initiated a clinical program in non-muscle invasive bladder cancer, or NMIBC, our first non-ocular solid tumor indication.
Better chemistry committed to the world`s biggest problems
Engage Therapeutics was founded by Greg Mayes, President and CEO; and Jouko Isojarvi MD, PhD Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer. Engage`s founders bring a combination of strong biopharma pedigrees and personal, family connections to epilepsy. Greg’s son has epilepsy, while Jouko has spent his entire career taking care of epilepsy patients as well as developing and commercializing approved treatments for this condition.