Proposal for a Market Assessment for thermally protected cysteines to rapidly obtain complex peptides with multiple disulfides

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

A market study will be conducted to assess the viability of commercializing a new chemical technology thatwill allow for the simple and inexpensive formation of multiple cysteine disulfide bridges within a givenpeptide-or chain of amino acids. This technology has recently had a provisional patent application 62/883332filed on August 06 to the USPTO. Disulfide bridges are formed when two cysteine amino acids use their sulfuratoms to make a new chemical bond. These bridges help organize the one-dimensional peptide chains intodefined three-dimensional shapes. When a peptide contains multiple different cysteine amino acids, multipledifferent three-dimensional shapes are possible, but generally only one is formed as the formation of thesebonds is mediated by other chaperone proteins found in the organism. Disulfide bridges are extremelyimportant in a number of small peptides including insulin and the conotoxins (which are potential analgesicsand non-addictive replacements for opioids for severe pain control). These molecules cannot be easily madeusing traditional biotechnology as standard bacterial expression systems lack the proper cellular machinery toensure that the correct disulfide bonds are formed. Consequently, many of these complex molecules are madechemically using solid-phase peptide synthesis where complex multi-step protocols are required to ensure thatthe correct disulfide bonds are formed: in some conotoxins there are 10 cysteines which makes for manypossible combinations of disulfide bridges, only one of which is active. These multistep procedures areexpensive and low-yielding. Trant and co-inventors have designed a new stimuli-triggerable method forgenerating these disulfide bridges selectively which will significantly decrease the complexity, cost, and timerequired to access these materials making many of them commercially viable for the first time. This technologywill be highly disruptive. We expect that the assessment will confirm that there is a commercial interest in thistechnology and will identify factors affecting adoption, key stakeholders and commercialization partners, andthe need for new approaches to improve the lives of millions of people in Canada and around the world.