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10 Top Next-Gen Biotech Platforms

First-generation biologics took a long time to reach their commercial potential, with many setbacks along the way. The test of faith among biotech companies such as Amgen ($AMGN), Genentech and Biogen Idec ($BIIB) paid off with blockbuster products that brought game-changing drugs to patients and turned those once-small players into giants. But it also left the path strewn with those fallen by the wayside. Now, second-generation platforms are looking to make the same dramatic impact on patient care as first-generation monoclonal antibodies.

Aileron CEO Hails Expanded Roche Deal as a Validation of Stapled-Peptide Drug Technology

By Arlene Weintraub

Yesterday, Cambridge, MA-based Aileron Therapeutics announced that a collaboration it had formed with European drug giant Roche in 2010 has been expanded. The companies, which have been working together on two programs focused on turning Aileron’s “stapled peptide” technology into cancer treatments, have now added a third program focused on inflammatory diseases.

Roche Backs New Method for Drug Delivery to Cells

By Duff Wilson

The Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche is throwing its weight behind an experimental technology that could be used to treat a number of diseases. The company has agreed to pay $25 million now and up to $1.1 billion later to Aileron Therapeutics of Cambridge, Mass., for developing a new type of drug technology called "stapled peptides."

Roche goes shopping for staples

By Stephen Hansen

Targeting intracellular protein-protein interactions is difficult because small molecules lack sufficient specificity, while molecules with higher specificity such as antibodies are too big to enter the cell. Aileron Therapeutics Inc. says its Stapled Peptide technology creates cell-penetrating peptides that provide antibody-like specificity.

Peptide Therapeutics’ Rising Tide

By Marc Wortman

As emerging technologies begin to overcome peptide therapeutics' pharmacologic limitations, their compelling potential grows clearer and their deal value has grown. Most if not all of Big Pharma and Big Biotech now have rebuilt their internal peptide drug development programs and show interest in start-ups with peptide pipelines and platforms.

Aileron Staples Peptides

By Wendy Wolfson

Aileron Therapeutics is pursuing an innovative drug development platform called stapled peptides that it believes is key to accessing the more than 80% of human targets that are today not reachable by existing biologics or small molecule drugs. The company believes its stapled peptide-based drugs have wide therapeutic potential for cancer, autoimmune, inflammatory, infectious and metabolic diseases.

Drug giants pump $40m into Aileron

By Rob Weisman

Four global pharmaceutical companies have joined in a consortium to provide $40 million in financing to Aileron Therapeutics, a Cambridge biotechnology start-up that is developing a novel approach to treating cancer and other diseases.

R&D Spotlight: Aileron Therapeutics

By Tomi K. Sawyer

Aileron's novel Stapled Peptides have unique chemical, biological and structural properties to address both intracellular and extracellular protein-protein interactions that serve as critical control points in disease mechanisms. While such protein-protein interactions have eluded most small-molecule strategies, Aileron's stapled peptides have demonstrated several important properties including efficient cell penetration, high affinity binding to large target protein surfaces, and remarkable metabolic stability and pharmacokinetic properties in vivo.

Harnessing Helices: Chemical braces hold peptides in place, heralding a potential new class of therapeutics

By Carmen Drahl

Technology for reinforcing the α-helix, a familiar protein motif throughout biology, could lead to a new class of peptide-based drugs. Because of their particular blend of chemical properties, stabilized helices may work against disease targets that have traditionally been out of reach.

Linking Up

By Neil Canavan

The time has come for hybrids. For the world of transportation, that means a vehicle that runs on different fuels. For the universe of healthcare, it’s a drug with the properties of more than one vehicle. Both approaches tip their hat to the reality that, like it or not, nature knows best.

Aileron ramps up business on heels of positive results

By Mark Hollmer

Cambridge – After spending more than two years as a bare-bones biotechnology company, with just three employees and contract researchers handling all laboratory work, Aileron Therapeutics, Inc. has hired 12 people in the last three months alone.

Development of Peptide Drugs Advances Briskly: Advantages for Protein-based Therapies Are Lower Toxicity and Better Efficacy

By Gail Dutton

Aileron Therapeutics is hot on the trail of a novel drug class that, in animal research, mimics the natural apoptosis process. These stapled alpha-helical peptides actually penetrate cells, allowing them to block intra-cellular protein-protein interactions that can’t be addressed by small molecules or biologics, according to Huw M. Nash, Ph.D., vp, corporate development, in his presentation at Cambridge Healthtech’s “Protein-Protein Interactions as Drug Targets,” held this week in La Jolla, CA.