Peptone

Peptone is a drug discovery company that builds what it calls a Product Engine to generate small-molecule drug candidates against intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) — proteins or protein regions that do not fold into a fixed structure and therefore resist conventional structure-based drug design. The engine couples experimental measurement of disordered proteins in solution with computational modeling, generative design and laboratory validation in a single loop: measurement techniques such as hydrogen-exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS) and NMR spectroscopy read a disordered chain directly in solution, enhanced sampling and AI models resolve the rare, low-population conformational states in which a transient binding pocket opens, generative models propose molecules against those states, and cell-based assays and live-cell imaging in Peptone's BSL2 laboratory test each prediction.

The company states its mission is to deliver therapies to patients with cancer, and describes a pipeline spanning oncology, immunology and inflammation, and CNS indications. Disclosed programs include AR-NTD for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, c-Myc for MYC-driven solid tumors, and TDP-43 for TDP-43 proteinopathy in ALS and frontotemporal dementia. Peptone was founded in 2018 and has offices in London and Bellinzona, Switzerland, where it operates an experimental biophysics laboratory opened in 2022. It emerged from combined academic research on intrinsically disordered proteins associated with Cambridge, Oxford, ETH Zurich and the University of Groningen.

Founding story

Peptone was founded in 2018 by Kamil Tamiola, who serves as chief executive officer, drawing on roughly 30 years of combined academic research into intrinsically disordered proteins at Cambridge, Oxford, ETH Zurich and the University of Groningen.

Business model

Peptone develops proprietary small-molecule programs against intrinsically disordered protein targets while also working with pharmaceutical partners; at the time of its Series A it reported two pilot projects with large pharmaceutical companies and a partnership approach that included co-development opportunities. It has since formed a strategic partnership with Evotec and sponsored research collaborations with academic institutes.

Peptone has not disclosed detailed revenue arrangements; it has pursued pharmaceutical partnerships, pilot projects and co-development opportunities alongside its own therapeutic pipeline.

Traction

By the June 2022 Series A the company had identified five disordered protein targets to advance toward pre-clinical validation and had two undisclosed pilot projects with large pharmaceutical companies. It has since disclosed named programs against AR-NTD, c-Myc and TDP-43, formed a strategic partnership with Evotec, and published research with NVIDIA and academic collaborators.

Latest developments

In 2025 Peptone announced a strategic partnership with Evotec to accelerate small molecule therapeutics against intrinsically disordered proteins, introduced the PepTron-o ensemble-first structure prediction model with NVIDIA, convened its advisory board in London, and presented its Kubernetes and AWS architecture for protein structure prediction at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2025. In May 2026 the company and the University of Copenhagen published a Nature Communications study using multithermal enhanced sampling to reveal rare, experimentally consistent states of the ACTR protein.