Custom Peptide Synthesis

At Cambrex, we specialize in custom peptide synthesis delivering high-quality peptide drug substances through our advanced solid phase (SPPS) and liquid phase peptide synthesis (LPPS) capabilities, tailored to meet the demands of early-stage clinical development, small-volume production, and large-scale GMP manufacturing.

Accelerating Early-Stage Drug Development

Cambrex’s solid phase capabilities are designed to streamline custom peptide synthesis for early-stage clinical development and small-volume production, leveraging advanced technologies and standardized workflows to ensure precision, scalability, and efficiency. As the leading approach for peptide synthesis, SPPS minimizes process development through a plug-and-play methodology, enabling rapid delivery of high-quality peptide drug substances for clinical trials and proof-of-concept studies. Our SPPS approach includes:

• Early-Stage Clinical and Small-Volume Production – Our platforms support lab-scale synthesis (10 g, up to 50mer), pilot-scale production (100 g, up to 50mer) and GMP-scale manufacturing (1+ kg, up to 50mer).
• Advanced Technologies – Cambrex employs cutting-edge SPPS reactor systems, large-scale reverse-phase HPLC, and lyophilization techniques to isolate up to 1 kg of GMP peptide drug substance with exceptional purity.
• Standardized Workflows – Our solid phase workflows are designed to lower barriers and facilitate seamless integration with LPPS technology, including:
  • Rapid synthesis of peptide fragments for downstream assembly.
  • Testing fragment coupling and solubility properties.
  • Utilizing aggregation prediction algorithms and first-principles approaches for fragment selection.
  • Installation of hydrophobic tags post-fragment selection to avoid downstream TAG cleavage issues.
• Investment in Automation – Automated SPPS platforms enhance efficiency and scalability, maintaining flexibility for early-phase development while supporting multi-kilogram GMP manufacturing.
• Process Development – Depending on your needs, we may initiate LPPS process development following SPPS-based fragment synthesis to support large-scale GMP manufacturing, ensuring a smooth transition from early-stage to commercial production.

Optimizing Late-Stage GMP Manufacturing

To reduce the economic and environmental impacts of manufacturing peptides, Snapdragon Chemistry has invested extensively in R&D to design a new liquid phase peptide synthesis technology that utilizes traditional batch reactors and continuous flow, removing the dependency on specialized, solid phase reactors and resulting in more efficient and sustainable processes.

Key Benefits of our LPPS Technology

• Reduced Solvent and Reagent Demand – Minimizes the use of solvents and excess reagents compared to standard solid phase peptide synthesis (SPPS), enhancing efficiency.
• Support for Peptides of Various Sizes – Capable of synthesizing peptides up to 12 residues long, with larger peptides assembled using a convergent fragment coupling approach in liquid phase.
• Elimination of Specialized Reactors – Simplifies production by removing the need for specialized solid phase reactors.
• Compatibility with Protecting Group Strategies – Fully supports both Fmoc and Cbz protecting group strategies, even within the same peptide fragment, offering greater flexibility.
• Scalability – Easily scalable processes, similar to traditional small molecule manufacturing, ensuring seamless implementation.
• Cost Efficiency – Delivers a significantly more cost-effective solution compared to traditional SPPS methods.
• Environmental Sustainability – Promotes the use of sustainable solvents, such as 2-methyltetrahydrofuran, as alternatives to problematic solvents like N,N-dimethylformamide used in SPPS.

Our new LPPS technology is a transformative innovation in custom peptide synthesis, development and manufacturing, addressing critical economic and environmental challenges while maintaining high efficiency and flexibility.