Unnatural: Expanding the macrocyclic peptide chemical space

Backed with a $32 million series A round, Unnatural Products is the latest macrocycle company to spin out of Scott Lokey’s lab. The company’s empirical approach to macrocycle design, which entails synthesizing libraries of circular peptides using a bespoke robotic platform, has won it partnerships with Bridgebio and Merck.

CEO Cameron Pye told BioCentury that he and CSO Joshua Schwochert started Unnatural Products Inc. to solve the pharmacokinetic challenges holding back use of macrocyclic peptides, which are better suited to disrupting protein-protein interactions than small molecules, but can be difficult to make membrane permeable and oral bioavailable...