2023 Company Presentations
FunPep Co., Ltd.
Profile
FunPep is a public, late clinical-stage therapeutics company that has developed a functional peptide and antibody-inducing peptide platform. Antibody-inducing peptides are unique compounds that produce antibodies in vivo by administering the peptide alone. Our lead asset is licensed to Shionogi, with another clinical asset optioned to Sumitomo Pharma, and two ongoing R&D collaborations using our platform. We are seeking to partner our three pre-clinical assets and find additional R&D collaborations for our platform. Peptide vaccines are in development as potential therapies for many major conditions, including chronic viral infections, allergies, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, hypertension and rheumatoid arthritis. The therapeutic vaccines are known to induce neutralizing antibodies against self-molecules and have been clinically tested. To improve the immunogenicity and reduce the adverse event, in the past decade progress of active immunotherapy has been made both in the selection of B cell epitope and the carrier protein. Antibody inducing peptide that is named by FunPep Co., Ltd. contains two amino acid sequences which are classified into helper T cell epitope (AJP001 peptide) or B-cell epitope. Antibody-inducing peptides are expected as alternative excellence of technology to supply inexpensive drugs for current expensive antibody drugs. The PI/IIa clinical trial of FPP003 that is AJP001-B cell epitope complex compound has been completed. The study concluded that FPP003 was generally well tolerated and there were no SAEs. FPP003 had an immunological response in humans and the maximum titer was observed under these study conditions. We believe that it is a world first to produce and sustain antibodies with only the administration of a peptide, and we believe we have confirmed the concept of antibody-inducing peptides in clinical trials.