Ascent: Scaling Pepducins

Inherent in peptide pharmacology are issues around route of administration, cost and poor pharmacokinetic profiles. Ascent Therapeutics Inc. thinks it has solved some of those problems via its Pepducin technology platform, while maintaining the specificity of peptide therapeutics.

Pepducins are cell-penetrating lipopeptides that act as antagonists inside the cell, rather than externally on the cell surface. Specifically, a short peptide derived from a G protein-coupled receptor intracellular loop is tethered to a hydrophobic moiety that anchors the peptide in the cell membrane lipid bilayer...