New promise for drugs against difficult targets

STOCKHOLM—Swedish company Salipro Biotech AB recently announced that the European Patent Office had issued European Patent No. 3463303, titled “Saposin lipoprotein particles and libraries from crude membranes.” The patent covers the company’s novel method of direct extraction of membrane proteins (DirectMX) from cells or crude membranes to enable drug development for challenging drug targets, as well as for the generation of libraries with Salipro particles representing the membrane proteome, the particles themselves, and their uses.

The key application is in drug discovery, where membrane proteins represent the targets of more than 60 percent of drugs in clinical use. However, progress in drug development is often hampered by the inherent instability of membrane proteins—a major problem which is reportedly addressed by the Salipro platform’s ability to stabilize those important drug targets.

“Ever since its inception, DirectMX has had a profound impact on how we accelerate drug discovery with our pharma partners,” said Jens Frauenfeld, the company’s CEO. “Our foundational IP covering the Salipro platform technology has already resulted in various patents being granted to Salipro Biotech in the US, EU, China, and Japan, and this patent will provide additional broad protection for our proprietary platform technology for the stabilization of challenging drug targets.”

Added Salipro’s business developer, Maria Knudsen: “DirectMX is rapidly becoming established as a key drug discovery platform and we are already partnering with major pharma companies on a range of targets, including GPRCs, SLCs, and ion channels. Further strengthening our patent portfolio will enable us to increase the value of such collaborations as well as moving towards building our own discovery pipeline.”