From Protein Science R&D to Therapeutics: Expert Insights (Part 2)

Ann Nguyen:
Hello. This is Ann Nguyen, Senior Associate Conference Producer with Cambridge Healthtech Institute. We are here for a special two-part podcast series for PepTalk: The Protein Science Week, which runs January 9-13 in San Diego, California.

Today, we're featuring insights from protein science experts who are part of the "It's a Wrap" Closing Plenary Panel Discussion, which represents various R & D stages that are, in turn, encompassed by the seven topic pipelines at PepTalk.

We've asked today's experts the same question: What do you see as the next, most promising innovation in your field?

Here's Diane Paskiet, Senior Director of Global Scientific Affairs at West Pharmaceutical Services, representing the Analytics & Impurities topic.

Diane Paskiet:
Well thank you, Ann, for that question. In the field of drug delivery and containment, it's becoming increasingly important to be able to incorporate more of the patient experience into the drug development process. Protecting biologics and effectively delivering them are two key areas for advancement. Really the end goal for all stakeholders is to make available valuable treatments with evidence for enhancing the patient journey, and parallel development of biologics with delivery systems, including incorporating things such as patient metrics, are two key areas for improvement. There is an abundance of interrelated factors between the biologic product and its delivery system, and forming partnerships early on will facilitate the development process.

These attributes are designed into the development plan from the start. Incremental cost for fixing a critical attribute can be minimized, and this will save time and money and resources and also avoiding late-stage problems. It really stands to reason that expert knowledge and support can be gained during the drug development stages, since the container and delivery system is so integral to the patient experience. Consider for instance the trends toward self-injection in the home setting, and requirements to the delivery of … biologics. Sometimes the solutions are quite viscous, volumes are greater than the standard 1 mL and the patient outcome could be improved with a wearable patch injector and consider it as part of the biologic design process.

Risks associated with biologic device compatibility and delivery could be managed in advance, reducing the need for redesign. In addition, important evidence for effective treatments could be monitored through connected health then built right into the delivery system. Verification of important factors such as adherence, the delivery of the biologic, and patient response to dosing are all possibilities to be able to contribute to providing optimal healthcare and evidence of patient outcomes.

This is just one example of how patient experience can be incorporated into the development process. Each type of product will have different requirements of course, but for each delivery need, but depending on the disease state and the treatment, all products should be efficiently designed with the patient in mind.

Ann Nguyen:
We also spoke with Dr. Tilman Schlothauer, Principal Scientist and Biochemical and Analytical Research and Large Molecule Research with Roche Pharma Research and Early Development at Roche Innovation Center Munich. He represents the Protein Engineering & Development pipeline.

Tilman Schlothauer:
Yes, coming from large molecule research and doing protein antibody engineering and also being interested in antibody protein characterization for the in-direction studies that could be done in the moment with proteins and antibodies, I'm very interested in a deeper understanding of evolving technologies that are able to provide higher throughput of biological-relevant technologies. For example, assays that are able to describe protein-protein interactions in the cellular surrounding, and there are some technologies coming up in this way but some of them are premature and so it's very interesting for me to follow on with these technologies, how they support the field I'm working in, and to look at the possibilities, to having really high throughput, getting access to a lot of different binders, studying the epitope characterization on these and really getting direct information of the cellular event on this.

Another point that I'm very interested in is the scientific crosstalk, like being on conferences like the PepTalk, to getting in touch with other people, sharing their concepts and ideas, and really this is the challenge of our time, I think, because the knowledge really doubles every 2.5 years in the moment. And so there are productive ways needed to get the people in touch with each other. The computational design of such knowledge bases over various years that could evolve more and more all the time and I think if we do this and really provide a situation that we get better biological detail of our designs to really know what's designed by nature and how we could do better biomimetics on our own.

Ann Nguyen:
That wraps up Part 2 and this Q&A series with our panel of protein R&D experts.
All of them will be discussing the future of protein therapeutics, challenges and highlights from PepTalk: The Protein Science Week's presentations at the Closing Plenary Panel "It's a Wrap". The panel takes place the last day of this event, which runs January 9-13 in San Diego, California.