Xconomy: Aileron CEO Hails Expanded Roche Deal as a Validation of Stapled-Peptide Drug Technology
Summary
The financial details weren’t disclosed, but the original agreement was already quite lucrative for Aileron: Roche vowed $25 million to the biotech over the first two years of the partnership.Aileron CEO Joseph Yanchik believes Roche’s support will be vital to advancing the entire field of stapled peptides.“Until a year ago, all discussion about stapled peptides as a drug platform was coming out of the academic world and our presentations,” he says.“Large molecules can’t actually get inside of cells.” Plus most proteins unravel in the body and are chewed up by enzymes within minutes, rendering them useless as therapies.“This is a difficult thing to do because you improve one property and end up losing another,” says Tomi Sawyer, Aileron’s chief scientific officer.