An article published online in August 2010 described a new technology for delivering pharmaceutical products that may be on the horizon. It is being called ???stapled peptides.??? Roche, a Swiss pharmaceutical giant, has entered into a contract with Aileron Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to develop this technology, which involves a small protein, referred to as a stabilized form of a peptide, to deliver medicine directly into cells. It is thought that this technology can be applied to a variety of medical conditions, including cancer and inflammation.
The synthetic peptides, originally developed by a chemical biologist from Harvard University, have been described as a ???magic bullet??? ??? an agent that can deliver concentrated doses of a drug at the cellular level. These ???bullets??? have been tested in animal models and the results indicate that the drugs are stable in transit and remain active in the body for longer periods of time than traditional delivery systems. The global head of pharmaceutical research for Roche (Dr. Jean-Jacques Garaud) eloquently stated the importance of this research effort when he said that the challenge of industry is not identifying new targets for drugs, but rather reaching known targets with the most efficacious therapeutic dose of current drugs.
Though this new technology may still be several years away, the companies involved have begun preliminary talks with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as FDA approval is needed before any sort of human testing can take place. Another promising result of this collaboration is that it demonstrates that big pharmaceutical companies are accepting new approaches to treating medical conditions. While Roche and Aileron stated that they would begin research towards five target diseases with this new technology, neither company identified which medical disorders would be included in the five targeted diseases.