Peptide-based drug development offers growth'

Hyderabad: Will peptide pharmaceuticals provide the next big push to novel drug development and open up new opportunities for the drug industry?

With the global peptide market at around $10 billion, new technologies and economical methods of producing peptides, these natural pharmaceuticals offer a great potential for Indian companies to tap.

Giving this positive note, members of the Indian Peptide Society (IPS) felt that peptides could play an increasing role in the development of new treatment methods targeted against cancer, diabetes, auto-immune diseases, more effective diagnostics and as chemical messengers and neuro transmitters.

Indian companies such as Wockhardt, Sun Pharma, Dabur and Jupiter BioSciences have already established a sound base and portfolio to tap the growing market. There is scope for several other players as well they told presspersons here.

In developing anti-cancer drugs, which have the least side-effects, unlike the present cocktail of drugs used in chemotheraphy, peptides are offering the best leads. The reason being peptides can be target-specific and have the least lethal index (side effects) and maximum therapeutic index (effective drug), explained Dr Sudhanand Prasad of Dabur Research Foundation and Joint Secretary of the IPS.

For example, the peptide-based anti-cancer drug Leuprolide, of which Abbot Pharma is the original inventor, is one of the most popular and effective, with its range of products having nearly 20 per cent of the global peptide market at present. The DRF itself has a promising, anti-cancer drug in Phase-II clinical trials now, he told Business Line.

Limitations such as injection being the main route for drug delivery, comparatively higher costs of a gram of amino acid (of which peptides are the building blocks), less number of research initiatives and research funds that confront the drug sector are getting adequate focus, said Mr Venkat R. Kalavakolanu, Chairman & Managing Director of Jupiter Biosciences, here and Treasurer of the IPS.

To give a boost to the field, IPS is trying to forge links with the American and Japanese Peptide Society. At a two-day national peptide symposium, which began today, the latest developments and ways of using peptides, which are chains of amino acid residues with biological functions ranging from hormonal regulation to antibiotic activities, are being discussed.

The symposium has attracted participation from international institutes and companies.