Darwin McDaniel
Leidos’ life sciences unit has secured a U.S. patent for its new peptide-based PD-1 checkpoint inhibitors developed for more targeted delivery of treatments.
The company said Thursday that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued the patent for Leidos Health Life Sciences through the Patents 4 Patients program.
The program provides a faster review process for cancer immunotherapy-related patent applications.
Gabriel Gutierrez, Leidos researcher and one of the developers, said the team utilized tools used to fight cancer to develop the checkpoint inhibitors to fight infectious diseases such as malaria and HIV.
“Peptides represented an ideal tool to achieve our goal and this patent represents an important milestone for us,” he said.
Leidos said peptides enable researchers to provide more targeted delivery of treatments as they serve as a therapeutic platform that can be genetically engineered into vaccines, oncolytic viruses and cellular therapies.
