beam me up scotty

Sometimes simple messages are elusive. Re-listening to the recent Woolf interview on FNN News and re-reading the Chairman' Update from March 2012, I was struck by the concept that the value of phylomer peptides is in fact twofold. Not all peptides are treated equal.

The obvious moving target, which is the subject of the collaborations with Pfizer and AZ, is to identify peptides which demonstrate therapeutic benefits. Phylogica is required to select drug candidates which inevitably must meet the requirements for any drug - proof of efficacy. However, there is a second kind of peptide - possibly even more valuable to Big Pharma - which isn't designed to provide any therapeutic benefit, whatsoever. These intracellular peptides "can pull therapeutic cargoes through cell membranes". Cell penetrating peptides which can carry cargoes are the subject of the collaborations with Roche and Janssen.

The pathways for the two different types of peptides are radically different. The test of efficacy changes from providing a therapeutic benefit to capacity to carry a payload within cells.

"The vast majority of known therapeutic targets reside within cells, but have generally proved inaccessable to drugs, particularly large biological molecules," said Wilson.

Whether the degree of difficulty in reaching a licencing agreement with Big Pharma is altered depending on the type of peptide being targeted is beyond my reach of understanding. Nonetheless, in the war against disease through our collaborations with Roche and Janssen, its simply a matter of beam me up, Scotty.