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This is an interview with Jiro Sugimoto, CEO and President of PeptiGrowth Inc. PeptiGrowth is a supplier of innovative raw materials for the expanding market of regenerative medicine and cell and gene therapy that is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. In this interview, we discuss PeptiGrowth’s innovative and agile approach to the development and manufacture of alternative peptides, advantages that that company has over its competitors, and PeptiGrowth’s future directions. Enjoy!
Interview with Jiro Sugimoto of PeptiGrowth, Inc.
Cade Hildreth: What was your professional path before you joined/founded PeptiGrowth?
Jiro Sugimoto: In 1991, I graduated from Kyoto University where I studied organic chemistry and I was assigned to Chemicals Group in Mitsubishi Corporation. After two assignments in the United States for 8 years in total, I returned to Japan in 2008. In 2013, I became Pharmaceutical Team Leader in Bio-Fine Chemicals Department in Mitsubishi Corporation, and I led the establishment of PeptiGrowth.
Cade Hildreth: When and why was PeptiGrowth formed?
Jiro Sugimoto: PeptiGrowth was formed in 2020 as a joint venture between Mitsubishi Corporation (60.5%) and PeptiDream (39.5%). The company was created to address challenges in regenerative medicine and cell therapy research/manufacturing, particularly the use of recombinant protein growth factors which bring various issues such as inconsistent quality, poor stability, high cost, and potential contamination with biological impurities.
PeptiGrowth utilizes PeptiDream’s patented Peptide Discovery Platform System technology to identify the best peptides against the target receptors for use in cell therapy and regenerative medicine. The company has released six products so far and has a lot more in its pipelines, all of which are produced entirely by chemical synthesis, ensuring improved quality and much less variability with no risk of biological contaminants.
Cade Hildreth: Where is PeptiGrowth headquartered and what markets do you serve now?
Jiro Sugimoto: PeptiGrowth is based in Tokyo, Japan. We focus on regenerative medicine, cell therapy, and cellular agriculture industries.
Cade Hildreth: Why did you choose to focus the company around the raw materials necessary to support cell and gene therapies?
Jiro Sugimoto: Growth factors are a critical component of cell therapy and regenerative medicine. These growth factors play an important role in culturing and differentiating cells into final products. However, they also account for a large portion of the production cost of cellular pharmaceutical products.
Furthermore, there is an issue of lot-to-lot activity variation and a need from the industries for growth factors to be animal component-free to ensure their safety and efficacy. By providing peptide alternatives to the growth factors, PeptiGrowth can provide benefit to many patients who need these new modalities of medicine.
By supplying stable, chemically synthesized peptides that have the same functions as conventional recombinant protein growth factors, PeptiGrowth can eliminate all the issues such as cost, quality, stability, and safety that the industries are facing.
Cade Hildreth: What is the importance of growth factors and cytokines to the future of the regenerative medicine industry?
Jiro Sugimoto: Growth factors and cytokines play a crucial role in culturing various cells used for new therapies and treatments of a variety of diseases and injuries. For these therapies to be realized, it is important to provide growth factors and cytokines that are suitable for use in pharmaceutical applications, with features such as being animal component-free and having minimized lot-to-lot activity variation with GMP grade.
Cell therapy and regenerative medicine products are typically very expensive because most of them are tailor-made and requires strict quality control in production, with the need for large quantities of various expensive growth factors. The cost of growth factors accounts for a significant portion of the production cost in regenerative medicine and cell therapy products.
Therefore, reducing its cost is essential for making these new modalities of medicine available to the market and widely accessible to many patients.
Cade Hildreth: How would you describe alternative peptides and their importance?
Jiro Sugimoto: Our synthetic peptide growth factors offer several advantages over natural growth factors and cytokines. First, alternative peptides are completely animal component-free, eliminating the risk of contamination with animal pathogens. Second, the use of our synthetic peptides provides consistent and reproducible results as the activity and purity of each batch can be precisely controlled. Third, they offer a scalable and cost-effective manufacturing process compared to traditional methods that rely on animal serum or gene recombination technology.
Overall, our synthetic peptides have the potential to revolutionize the regenerative medicine an cell therapy industries by providing reliable and cost-effective options for researchers and pharmaceutical companies in their cell culture system.
Cade Hildreth: What is the importance of manufacturing your alternative peptides by chemical synthesis without animal serum or gene recombination technology?
Jiro Sugimoto: Firstly, it avoids the potential risks associated with animal-derived products, such as transmission of infectious agents, which is particularly critical in development of therapeutics for human use.
Secondly, chemical synthesis allows for more precise quality control over the final product, ensuring high and consistent quality in each batch.
Lastly, the use of chemical synthesis provides a reliable and scalable manufacturing process that can meet the demands of large-scale production needed for commercialization of the therapeutic products. PeptiStar, our sister company, already has large peptide production facilities that can produce a maximum batch size of 10 kg/batch. By leveraging these large facilities, we are able to significantly reduce the production cost, making it possible to offer our synthetic peptides at a reasonable price.
Cade Hildreth: What are the advantages of PeptiGrowth’s products over other alternatives? (Or: What are PeptiGrowth’s advantages over the competition?)
Jiro Sugimoto: PeptiGrowth’s synthetic peptides offer many advantages over conventional peptides, including high stability, elimination of lot-to-lot activity variation, animal-component free features, high scalability, and reasonable pricing potential. Although we currently have only 6 products on the market, we are concurrently developing various types of growth factor alternative peptides with the goal of launching 3 to 4 products per year.
When we have a solid lineup of peptides that covers major growth factors used in cell culture, we believe we can be the leading player in the growth factor market. While some companies sell functional peptides that work as alternatives to growth factors, no other company provides such a diverse range of growth factor alternative peptides.
Developing such a variety of functional peptides is only possible with a highly sophisticated peptide screening system like PeptiDream’s proprietary technology PDPS, and deep knowledge and experience in peptide development. As a result, PeptiGrowth is essentially the only company that can provide a wide variety of growth factor alternative peptides in the world.
Cade Hildreth: What is PeptiGrowth’s relationship with Mitsubishi Corporation and PeptiDream Inc.?
Jiro Sugimoto: Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) is one of Japan’s largest and most diversified trading companies. PeptiGrowth uses MC’s global network to efficiently market our synthetic peptide growth factors worldwide and works closely with MC subsidiaries such as MIFI Bioceuticals and IVICT Europe for marketing activities in North America and UK/EU regions. PeptiDream is responsible for developing growth factor alternative peptides using its proprietary technology, PDPS.
PeptiGrowth focuses on peptides that serve as growth factor alternatives, specifically RUO and MPG peptides used as additives in culture media, while PeptiDream focuses on peptides used as active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), which distinguishes from our business. Occasionally, PeptiGrowth’s peptides may have potential to be used as APIs, and in such cases, PeptiDream may collaborate with other pharmaceutical companies to do development.
Cade Hildreth: What types of customers does PeptiGrowth typically serve?
Jiro Sugimoto: We typically serve researchers in academia and pharmaceutical companies. Their research areas may include stem cell science, regenerative medicine, cell therapy such as CAR-T/CAR-NK, organoid developments for drug screening or testing application, and cultivated meat industries. In addition, vaccine production using mammalian cells is also our potential target market as growth factors are required for efficient cell proliferation.
However, we do not target IgG production and AAV production since they are usually done by cell lines that do not require growth factors or cytokines for cell culture.
Cade Hildreth: What are PeptiGrowth’s five-year goals?
Jiro Sugimoto: Many pharma companies are now entering clinical studies with their cell therapy products. Additionally, it is expected that several cellular agriculture companies will launch their products in the market by 2030. Therefore, we believe that the next five years will be a crucial period to gain a significant share in the market for growth factors used in our target areas.
As mentioned earlier, we are concurrently developing several synthetic peptide growth factors to expand our product line-up. We anticipate to launch several major synthetic peptide growth factors, including bFGF, EGF, VEGF, and Wnt3a in 2023 or early 2024.
The bFGF is especially important as it is commonly used in cell culture for pharmaceutical and cellular agriculture purposes. EGF has potential applications in vaccine production, which is another large market requiring significant quantities of growth factors for cell culture. VEGF and Wnt3a can be used to differentiate cells, particularly for vascularized organoids. We believe that leveraging these upcoming products will help us gain awareness from researchers in a wide variety of areas.
We are also focusing on developing alternative peptides for the interleukin series to enter the cell therapy market, as well as alternative peptides for major growth factors such as TGF beta1, Activin A, and BMP-4 within the next five years. We believe that by achieving such goals in the next 5 years, we can be the leading player in the market of growth factors within the next 10 years.
Cade Hildreth: How can people get in touch with you or learn more about PeptiGrowth?
Jiro Sugimoto: You can contact us directly via the information provided below or on our website. Our sister company in the US, MIFI Bioceuticals, is also working as the agent in North America. You can reach out to them for any inquiries or to arrange a meeting. We are always happy to connect with those who are interested in our company and our products. We look forward to hearing from you and sharing our exciting development.
Contact Information
PeptiGrowth Inc.
Kosuke Minamihata, PhD, Technical Support Manager for Marketing
Email : [email protected]; [email protected]
TEL : +81-70-7789-3905
URL : https://peptigrowth.com/en/
MIFI Bioceuticals, the Agent in North America
Jes Kuruvilla, PhD, Sales & Business Development Manager
Email :[email protected]
TEL : (201) 242-5104
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