“Pepscan has been the reliable expert partner for us with the right capacities to start our clinical journey”

Annually thousands of pharma and biotech companies launch a clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety of their potential new therapeutic or diagnostic tool. BiOrion is one of the companies that will take its first step in this clinical trajectory this year (2020) with their targeted peptide treating fibrotic diseases.

Getting ready for the clinic
“It is very exciting being able to enter the clinic. Therefore, we were looking for a reliable expert partner who is able to manufacture our complex conjugate-peptide that conforms to GMP standards. After working a few years on new peptide analogs, it became clear that Pepscan was the perfect match,” says Herman Steen, CEO of BiOrion.

“The therapy we’re developing is basically a Trojan horse interfering with the PDGF-β-receptor that is over-expressed on myofibroblasts in fibrotic tissue. To build ‘our horse’ we needed not only bicyclic peptides but also a conjugate-binder allowing it to deliver a payload at the appointed place. Together with Pepscan’s team of hands-on scientists we’ve been able to develop and manufacture this so we’ll soon be ready to micro-dose the first patients with liver fibrosis.”

Flexibility and close collaboration
“Since we only need small doses of this complex GMP-grade product, we were looking for a company that has both the facilities and expertise to make this work for us. The scale of Pepscan’s organization not only provided us with a level of flexibility that probably cannot be found in large scale CDMOs but also allowed us to work closely with all people involved in the development and manufacturing process. Both aspects of the collaboration have brought great benefits to this process and have proved to be one of the elements needed to enter the clinic with great confidence.”

Would you like to learn more about Pepscan’s clinical services? Get in touch with our product specialists: z.medic@pepscan.com.