Our Discovery Platform

Our PADS™ (Peptide Antagonist Discovery System) starts with a library-based protein fragment complementation screen. This step of PADS is performed in an intracellular environment, ensuring that our peptide hits are more likely to be resistant to degradation by proteases, be soluble, nontoxic, and target-specific in the presence of other cytoplasmic proteins.  Initial hits are distilled to leads through rational design by our team of scientists.

Design the Screen

  • Identify PPI of interest
  • Design semi-rational multi-million-member peptide library to screen against target

Run the Screen

  • In vitro expression system used to screen library
  • Successful campaign identifies a single ‘hit’ peptide for further development

Develop Hits into Therapeutic Leads

Sapience peptide chemists use the hit as the scaffold to design a small, rational peptide library optimizing for manufacturability, solubility, stability, immunogenicity, and activity