CEO Dave Robinson said the PepCRO suite allows “NEP to serve as the peptide-focused chemistry arm for in-house R&D teams at biotech and pharmaceutical companies, as well as academic and government research groups.”
He told Outsourcing-Pharma that NEP will provide a broad spectrum of development capabilities to clients, ranging from custom peptide design to characterisation and optimisation, using peptide design to explain how the service will operate.
“In collaboration with our customer NEP designs and executes a set of chemistry-based experiments that test the manufacturability of various structural options to help optimize bioavailability and bioactivity for a short list of lead candidates.”
Robinson added that: “Our customers have indicated they are not aware of a peptide-focused firm which offers this service, which is what prompted them to request that we develop them. We have not found another peptide firm which offers these services in such a manner.”
He went on to say that although the impetus for developing PepCRO came from requests from pharmaceutical and biotech clients, NEP “anticipates interest from the [contract research organisation] CRO segment of our customer base as well.”
California office
In related news, Massachusetts-based NEP has set up a new unit in California in a move it said will allow it to provide more hands-on support and service to new and existing customers in the western US.
John Phipps, who will oversee operations at the San Francisco office, said it will provide west coast customers with “easy access, during their peak working hours, for customer support and technical assistance.”