Redefining the therapeutic peptide business in the 21st century

During the annual TIDES event in 2016, Rodney Lax, PhD, business consultant at PolyPeptide Group, spoke on redefining the therapeutic peptide business in the 21st century;a topic still being discussed today.

With his 30 plus years of experience, Lax brought a wealth of knowledge, discussing the peptide manufacturing industry and consolidation, the complexity of the products themselves, the scale of manufacture, and number of potential delivery platforms that have continually increased.

Watch the full talk below:

Lax discusses the status of the peptide therapeutic manufacturing industry, as well as opportunities and how we can use the experience of the past to predict and prepare for the future. He lists costs, quality, regulatory controls and the handling of IP as ongoing challenges.

He opened his talk with the reasons for looking at peptide therapeutics:

'We all know the advances and disadvantages [of peptide therapeutics], but one thing we don't often put on paper is one of the most important reasons we're looking at peptide therapeutics: because they're there. There are over 7,000 known peptides and there are probably 10 million proteins in the biosphere, which we can tap for information to make new peptide therapeutics.'

Where's the market today?

Though thought to be a very resilient industry, Lax highlighted some industry changes impacting the market today:

'There's been almost a linear growth of the peptide drug product market since 2003 up to the present date, where we probably have a market revenues of $19 billion a year, and we expect that to go on growing, at least, up to 2020 when we should reach about $25 billion.'

The API (drug substance) market

There are four groups of companies and organizations that are involved in this market, Lax notes. They are:

1. Contract Manufacturig Organizations (CMO), specializing in therapeutic peptides
2. Pharmaceutical Companies (with therapeutic peptide manufacturing capabilities)
3. Other CMOs (occasionally manufacturing therapeutic peptides)
4. Special Service CMOs (cytotoxic peptides, peptide conjugatesetc)

TIDES: Oligonucleotides and Peptides 2018 is taking place on May 7-10, 2018 in Boston. Find out more or book your place here.