BICYCLE THERAPEUTICS PLC

We are a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company developing a novel class of medicines, which we refer to as Bicycle molecules, for diseases that are underserved by existing therapeutics. Bicycle molecules are fully synthetic short peptides constrained to form two loops which stabilize their structural geometry. This constraint facilitates target binding with high affinity and selectivity, making Bicycle molecules attractive candidates for drug development. Bicycle molecules are a unique therapeutic modality combining the pharmacology usually associated with a biologic with the manufacturing and pharmacokinetic, or PK, properties of a small molecule. The relatively large surface area presented by Bicycle molecules allows targets to be drugged that have historically been intractable to non-biological approaches. Bicycle molecules are excreted by the kidney rather than the liver and have shown no significant signs of immunogenicity to date, qualities which we believe explain the molecules’ favorable toxicological profile. We have a novel and proprietary phage display screening platform which we use to identify Bicycle molecules in an efficient manner. The platform initially displays linear peptides on the surface of engineered bacteriophages, or phages, before on-phage cyclization with a range of small molecule scaffolds which can confer differentiated physicochemical and structural properties. Our platform encodes quintillions of potential Bicycle molecules which can be screened to identify molecules for optimization to potential product candidates.