Arisgen

A different kind of company this time, Arisgen doesn't develop the drugs, but rather the delivery systems. Arisgen was founded in 2006 by Dr. Paolo Botti and is currently located in the Eclosion incubator near Geneva.

The challenge with peptide and protein drugs is that they usually need to be injected and it can be a challenge to get them to cross the cell membrane. One way to get the peptide or protein to enter the cell is to attach it to a cell penetrating peptide found through work on HIV. There are problems with this method such as uncertainty of the exact mechanism of entry and that this method further increases the size of the drug.  

A different method developed by Arisgen is to modify the peptide so making it more soluble and able to cross the epithilium. There are few details on the Arisgen webpage but it appears to be some ... compound that masks the functional groups of the amino acids and then the entire thing is wrapped in a lipid for delivery. They currently claim this technique is in preclinical trails.

In addition to crossing the epithilium, Arisgen has developed another technology to get peptides to cross the cell membrane. As described on their webpage:

...the intracellular delivery via reversible attachment of biocompatible polymers and bio-functional moieties to the peptide. Once into the cytosol, the cell’s naturally present esterases release the original active compound.

And it also appears that Arisgen also has a CTI grant. CTI appears everywhere with SME's in Switzerland! I wonder how much the CTI increases Switzerland's competitiveness, especially given the strength of the Swiss Franc in recent years and the high cost of labour in Switzerland.