A platform for discovery of functional cell-penetrating peptides for efficient multi-cargo intracellular delivery.

Cell penetrating peptides (CPPs) offer great potential to deliver therapeutic molecules to previously inaccessible intracellular targets. However, many CPPs are inefficient and often leave their attached cargo stranded in the cell's endosome. We report a versatile platform for the isolation of peptides delivering a wide range of cargos into the cytoplasm of cells. We used this screening platform to identify multiple "Phylomer" CPPs, derived from bacterial and viral genomes. These peptides are amenable to conventional sequence optimization and engineering approaches for cell targeting and half-life extension. We demonstrate potent, functional delivery of protein, peptide, and nucleic acid analog cargos into cells using Phylomer CPPs. We validate in vivo activity in the cytoplasm, through successful transport of an oligonucleotide therapeutic fused to a Phylomer CPP in a disease model for Duchenne's muscular dystrophy. This report thus establishes a discovery platform for identifying novel, functional CPPs to expand the delivery landscape of druggable intracellular targets for biological therapeutics.

Structure-diverse Phylomer libraries as a rich source of bioactive hits from phenotypic and target directed screens against intracellular proteins.

Phylomers are peptides derived from biodiverse protein fragments. Genetically encoded Phylomer libraries have been constructed, containing hundreds of billions of peptides derived from virtually all of the few thousand fold families found in the protein universe. They offer a rich source of high quality hits against diverse target sequences and have been used for three main purposes: firstly, to identify and validate targets in phenotypic screens; secondly, to block protein interactions with nanomolar potency binding affinities; thirdly as a source of more efficient cell penetrating peptides for the delivery of a wide range of biologics. Phylomer libraries are being increasingly used in applications such as phenotypic screening where the numbers of peptides which can be feasibly screened is limited. Phylomers also offer access to the intracellular target landscape, which remains largely undruggable by conventional means.

Screening for peptide drugs from the natural repertoire of biodiverse protein folds.

Although monoclonal antibody (mAb) drugs targeting protein interactions exist, these therapeutics cannot access intracellular proteins involved in disease complexes. Moreover, mAbs are more difficult to deliver and are frequently associated with a prohibitive 'royalty stack.' Outlined here is an alternative approach based on libraries of natural, highly structured peptides that offers new opportunities for identifying effective, specific inhibitors of protein-protein interactions. Libraries of such peptides (referred to hereafter as phylomers) comprise both random and structured peptides encoded by natural genes of diverse bacterial genomes. Because the number of protein subdomain structures found in nature is limited, diverse libraries containing millions of phylomers constitute virtually all of the available classes of protein fold structures, providing a rich source of peptides that interact specifically and with high affinity to human proteins. This approach may help not only in understanding the implications of each interaction identified within the interactome but also in the development of effective drugs targeted to particular protein functions. Although phylomers are active in animal models, the challenge remains to demonstrate efficacy and safety in a clinical setting.