SBIR Phase II: Cost-Effective Peptide Production Platform

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to accelerate the commercialization of special molecules known as peptides. The last twenty years have seen extensive academic research on bioactive and structural peptides for applications ranging from antimicrobials, vaccines, scaffolds for tissue engineering and drug delivery growth factors for cell culture media, and bioactives for medical nutrition or the control of chronic diseases. However, despite their great potential, few have advanced to translation at scale, due in part to the prohibitive cost of peptide synthesis. This project continues to advance a peptide production system toward commercial viability. The proposed project aims to scale-up a recombinant technology platform that will dramatically decrease the cost of manufacturing of peptides beyond what is currently commercially feasible. It addresses peptide production from a different perspective than that of current recombinant peptide production technologies. Specifically, taking advantage of the fact that peptides can be treated as polymers rather than as folded proteins with a complex structure, novel microbial cell factories will enable peptide production and purification. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.