Therapeutic Peptides was founded by Don R. Owen, Ph.D., in 1992, with the mission of designing, testing, synthesizing, and integrating peptides and peptide derivatives into successful formulations for the cosmeceutical personal healthcare industry.
Based upon experience gained in peptide development and synthesis as a faculty member at Tulane University, Dr. Owen focused TPI's initial development efforts on cationic amphipathic peptides, off shoots of Dr. Jesse Janes' work at LSU that centered on their antimicrobial properties for wound healing. Much of the research by TPI was funded Helix Biomedix, Inc., and the resulting patents issued to Dr. Owen (US Patents 6,875,744; 7,354,903; and 7,381,704) were assigned to that company.
Subsequently, TPI began work on a next generation of the peptides. “We were looking at ways to reduce costs by reducing the size of the peptide, but it became obvious that the antimicrobial properties of the peptides decreased as the number of lysines in the peptide decrease,” Dr. Owen recalls. “We began a development effort to attach lipid tails to shorter (nine to three amino acids) peptides to make bio-surfactants and return antimicrobial activity to the compounds. The resulting lipo-peptides had a conventional head-tail relationship, formed micelles, foamed in water, possessed a CMC, and were enzyme digestible. The sequence selections lead to the issuance of US Patents 8,431,523 and 8,586,541, which were assigned to TPI.”
TPI has dramatically expanded its synthesis and application exploration efforts, allowing it to develop a bioactive lipopeptide library of over one thousand candidates. The multi-lysinyl lipo-oligopeptides compounds represent TPI's first generation of peptides; the multi-tailed lipid-oligopeptides represent the second generation, and the third generation includes multi-arginine/ lysine containing lipo-oligopeptides.
“These new generations of lipo-oligopeptides represent opportunities for much more than wound healing such as anti-aging skincare, pigmentation control, and hair and lash growth for example.”
The use of free base lipo-oligopeptides with lipid solubility for numerous applications is now available. Bioactive digestible lipo-oligopeptide based liquid core nanoparticles (LNPs) or micro-lipospheres are TPI's next major step forward in dermatological anti-aging.