PolyPeptide in Limhamn, Sweden and Red Glead Discovery in Lund, Sweden have joined forces to pursue the development of a more sustainable manufacturing method for a GLP-1 agonist. The project has been awarded 1 million SEK from Vinnova, Sweden’s innovation agency, and will be running over the next 12 months.

The global demand for diabetes and obesity medications, or GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs, is significant. The manufacturing of peptides is generally a process with a high process mass intensity, including the use of hazardous solvents such as N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) in large quantities. As such, there is an increasing demand for developing effective green manufacturing processes for peptides to meet future demands, while decreasing the environmental impact.

Under the project, a detailed experimental investigation into whether a specific GLP-1 peptide can be produced efficiently using other solvent(s) than DMF will be performed. A successful outcome will benefit workers in the peptide manufacturing industry, the environment and promote sustainable development.

Johan Evenäs, CEO at Red Glead Discovery says: “This project has the potential to further position Sweden and Skåne as an arena for sustainable innovation and production of peptide-based compounds for pharmaceuticals and other applications.”

Linda Haugaard-Kedström, Development Director, PolyPeptide Group, says: “PolyPeptide’s strategy is to be the most innovative peptide CDMO. This includes collaborative efforts to develop green chemistry processes for growing manufacturing volumes.”