Jitsubo's main focus is to use its core technology, Molecular Hiving^®, to develop a portfolio of therapeutic peptides with our strategic partners. Therapeutic peptides have many advantages over antibodies, protein therapeutics, and small molecules such as a source of new medicines.

• Peptides with very high levels of affinity and specificity can be discovered in weeks whereas it usually takes months/years to discover comparable small molecules
• Peptides can more readily inhibit protein-protein interactions than is typically the case with small molecules
• Peptides do not require the establishment of high-expressing cell lines for their manufacture which makes the transition from discovery to clinical development much quicker
• IP relating to their discovery and manufacture is less complex resulting in reduced royalty stacking issues

Once the mechanism of a therapeutic protein's action is well-characterized, it is often possible to design a derivative therapeutics which uses only the regions of the protein that are critical to providing the beneficial effect. These regions are generally short stretches of amino acids called peptides. Peptides are easier to synthesize and purify than whole proteins. Peptides are also modified to substitute one amino acid to another, or reorder amino acids from their native conformation; such modifications can often contribute to the improvement of the specificity and efficacy of a therapeutic protein. Molecular Hiving^® enables us to easily modify the peptides, especially for the complicated modification such as a saccharide or sugar chain.