From the Neuland Reading Room: Peptide Trends in 2024

Peptide medications have been around for decades, but a wave of new changes is coming to this subset of pharmaceuticals. Who hasn't heard of the weight-loss phenomenon Ozempic? Or seen how AI is changing everything and helping to make new peptide drugs? 

In the pharmaceutical world, peptides keep popping up in headlines. New studies, new clinical trials, and new products are starting to feature peptides more and more. It's no wonder that BCC Research showed that the peptide market is supposed to hit $157.5 billion by the end of 2028, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.8%. 

What’s changing for these chains of amino acids? For pharmaceutical companies, here are the peptide trends you'll want to pay attention to. 

Peptide Drugs for Weight Loss

The Ozempic craze isn’t just for consumers—it’s also for pharmaceutical companies. In fact, Pharmaceutical Technology went so far as to say that “anti-obesity drugs will be the most impactful trend of 2024,” and I have to say I agree.  

Since peptide-1 receptor agonists became a specific drug class, pharmaceutical companies have poured resources into researching and developing their own versions of the drug, such as Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic (semaglutide), Wegovy (semaglutide), and Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro (tirzepatide). They’ve been so successful that Lilly is even working on a second GLP-1 agonist peptide product. 

The popularity of peptides for weight loss is changing both the clinical and financial landscape for pharma companies. The number of clinical trials for obesity drugs in 2023 was up by 68% from 2022, with 124 drugs in active development, 40% of which are agonists of either the GLP-1 or glucose-dependent insulinotropic peptide (GIP) receptor. The rise in popularity of these drugs is skyrocketing the stocks for companies that manufacture weight-loss peptides—so much so that there are weight-loss exchange-traded fund (ETF) portfolios for investors! 

Peptides and AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) come with a host of worries about computers taking over the world. But if they do, at least we’ll have more medications. Pharmaceutical companies are diving head-first into AI and using the tech to pump the peptide pipeline full of possibilities. 

Of course, we have to mention that Google’s AlphaFold 3 came out in May. It’s a sophisticated software that uses machine learning to predict the structures of proteins, amino acids, DNA, and more. The software is already being used to drive peptide advancements. With the use of AI, AlphaFold can help model accurate peptide structures, providing scientists with essential information to support peptide design and optimization.

Researchers at Hangzhou University in China are using deep learning—a subset of machine learning that is designed to think like a human brain—to generate de novo peptide structures that address some of the shortcomings that peptides usually have. The first step in successful deep learning software is having an ample data set, so researchers started collecting peptide sequences and structural information through literature reviews and various experimental techniques to supply their software with an accurate data set. Then, from their data set, they started predicting peptide structures. Peptides are often more flexible than proteins, which makes peptide design tricky. However, researchers are using deep learning to predict peptide structures to accelerate drug discovery.

Other researchers are diving into the AI possibilities, too. Briefings in Bioinformatics published a piece on how some researchers are using AI to create peptides with antifungal, antiviral, and antibacterial capabilities. They are using AI to help propose peptide designs and then validate them by simulating the possibilities of how that peptide would work. The researchers developed deep learning software that uses deep neural networks to assess the probability of adverse drug reactions in novel pharmaceutical compounds. Additionally, they started using HydrAMP, a conditional variational autoencoder (cVAE), to uncover a continuous representation of peptides. One of the peptides they generated was a superior analogue (Hydraganan-1) of Pexiganan, which they then tested against E. coli strains.

New Peptide Drug Delivery Methods

It’s not a hard pill to swallow. New peptide delivery methods, including pills, are appearing on the market. The American Chemical Society named new macrocycle peptide delivery methods as one of the top pharmaceutical trends for 2024. Peptides, when taken orally, often get degraded in the gastrointestinal tract due to enzymes and acids before they can be absorbed into the bloodstream. That’s why most of the peptide drugs currently available come in the form of injections or infusions. 

However, some companies are changing the game. Insamo, a California start-up, just scored $12 million in seed funding to develop small, orally available, and cell-permeable cyclic peptides to replace medicines that can currently only be injected or infused. Orally available options for peptide medications would offer several advantages over current injectable delivery methods, including better patient compliance, easier shipment and storage, and lower risks of infection because there’s no injection site. 

Similarly, Orbis Medicines is developing macrocyclic peptides that address a wider range of targets and can be taken as oral pills. Orbis’s ace-up-the-sleeve is its technology platform, which helps researchers design macrocycle peptides with specific properties in mind, such as oral bioavailability and cellular permeability to address targets inside of cells. 

Synthetic Peptides

The first peptide product to be widely used was insulin in the 1920s, and it was usually insulin extracted from the pancreas of pigs or cows. Since then, more peptide products have been approved, but most of them have continued to be from natural sources (although they’re not usually from cows and pigs anymore). However, recent technological innovations, rational drug design approaches, and random screening campaigns have opened up possibilities for synthetic peptides. Synthetic peptides are reaching several patient populations that have needed treatment. 

For example, the International Journal of Molecular Sciences published a piece about how researchers were developing a lab-made version of the WMR peptide, an AMP derived from the marine peptide Myxinidin, to treat lung infections such as cystic fibrosis. The synthetic version of this peptide is more serum-stable, making it easier to manufacture and ship to patients. 

Additionally, the publication Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery had an expert opinion on the creation of synthetic cyclic peptides. Like many other types of peptides, cyclic peptides—which can bind to a broader range of protein targets than traditional small molecules—were usually mined from natural sources. However, thanks to technological advancements such as mRNA display and genetic code reprogramming, pharmaceutical companies are creating de novo cyclic peptides capable of oral availability and targeting intracellular proteins.

What Does Peptide Popularity Mean for You?

Peptides are in high demand, and that demand will only grow from here. If your pharma company wants to create a new peptide or scale-up production of an existing peptide product, now is the time to do so—or you risk being left behind in a competitive market. 

We are here to help. Neuland’s peptide synthesis services include production of peptides from milligrams to multi-kilogram scale by standard sequential chemical peptide syntheses and segment condensation strategies. 

If you want to level up your pharmaceutical manufacturing of peptides by partnering with a cutting-edge CDMO, contact Neuland today.