Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) dominate a massive yet growing market in biotherapeutics. With many major areas of unmet medical need now being addressed by new biologics, clinical proof of concept is being broadly established, paving the way for the next generation of antibody-like products derived from a number of platform technologies.

While approved mAb products are achieving considerable commercial success, the opportunity for next generation products has been widely recognised. It is clear that the next wave of biotherapeutics will require 'enhancement technologies' in order to achieve the goals of improved ADME, sustained release (modified dosing), tailored drug delivery and product differentiation. PEGylation as an enhancement technology is already well established in the antibody fragment space, having been successfully applied to the UCB-Celltech product Certolizumab Pegol (CDP-870).

PolyTherics has recognised the commercial opportunity to apply TheraPEG™ to antibody fragments and other novel protein moieties with antibody-like properties.