December 6, 2012 Protagonist and Ironwood Expand Peptide Drug Discovery Collaboration
July 11, 2012 Protagonist Therapeutics featured in Xconomy article: Protagonist Criss-Crosses Pacific, in Search of New Peptide Drugs View article (2.6 MB)
June 18, 2012 Zealand Pharma and Protagonist Therapeutics Team Up for Peptide Drug Discovery and Development
Protagonist is a peptide and peptidomimetic therapeutics company pursuing technology platform driven discovery and development of disulfide rich peptides (DRPs) as:
New chemical entities (NCEs) against protein-protein interaction (PPI) targets translating to a distinct clinical and commercial benefit to biologics
Orally active NCEs for inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD)—a feature not achieved either by biologics (lack of oral activity) or small molecules (lack of potency)
Peptides are known to have poor proteolytic stability and therefore limited therapeutic utility. DRPs offer a proven but relatively unexploited solution to this problem. The Company has developed a proprietary drug discovery technology platform that enables it to identify DRP based hits and leads against almost any type of targets in a de novo manner. These DRP molecules are highly constrained and stable chemical entities that combine the beneficial features of monoclonal antibody (mAb) drugs with the desired properties of small molecule drugs. These properties include improved oral stability, reduced immunogenicity, favorable pharmacokinetics, improved distribution and tissue penetration, and delivery by injectable and/or oral routes.
Protagonist has established technology validating collaborations with emerging companies in the field of peptide therapeutics:
