Novel Synthetic Glycoproteins

GlycoForm's homogeneous Novel Synthetic Glycoproteins will give optimised activity for best in class performance.

Glycoproteins occur naturally; 70% of all proteins in humans are glycosylated. Some of the most effective and life changing medications for patients are derived from human glycoproteins, from erythropoietin for the management of anaemia in renal disease and cancer patients through to monoclonal antibodies which destroy cancer cells.

The development of these life changing drugs has been difficult because they are glycosylated. Sugars are added by an enzymatic process which produces a heterogeneous mix of products known as glycoforms, with the same peptide backbone but with different sugars attached. Because all current protein expression methods produce heterogeneous mixes the biggest challenge has been to understand the activity of all these different glycoforms individually and the effect that each sugar type has on activity.

GlycoForm’s technology enables true glycosylation pattern based SAR by using chemistry to construct pure sugars and then ligate these to the protein in a very accurate and consistent manner. GlycoForm’s approach also allows the rapid evaluation of natural and non-natural sites for glycosylation in the same way others have looked at pegylation or amino acid sequence changes to produce enhanced effects.

GlycoForm’s chemistry-enabled, site-directed conjugation approach allows for the use of any expression system to derive the starting protein.