Ved Srivastava
Vice President, Peptide Chemistry, Intarcia Therapeutics

Over the last four-decades, we have witnessed exponential progress in research, development and commercialization of biologics-based medicines. More than one thousand peptide modalities are currently being studied for pre-clinical and clinical outcomes in a variety of disease areas such as metabolic diseases, cardiovascular, cancer, gastrointestinal, infectious diseases, and numerous others. This exponential progress in peptide therapeutics is attributed to advances in technologies for improving pharmaceutical characteristics, cost effective manufacturing and most importantly alternative, patient friendly peptide delivery. Recently approved peptide-based drugs such as, Byetta^TM (BID), Victoza^TM (OD), Trulicity^TM (QW) and Tanzeum^TM (QW) for the treatment of  Type 2 diabetes are great examples of  the clinical and commercial successes of peptide-based drugs. 

Approximately two thirds of extracellular druggable peptide targets have already been investigated. The novel approaches of molecules designed for cell-permeable macrocyclic peptides address intracellular targets that are currently considered undruggable, e.g. stapled pep ...