XL-protein GmbH

XL-protein develops and commercializes its proprietary clinical-stage PASylation® technology to extend the in vivo half-life of biopharmaceuticals. The genetic fusion (or chemical conjugation) with conformationally disordered amino acid sequences composed of the three small residues Pro, Ala, and/or Ser ('PASylation') provides a simple means to attach a solvated biopolymer with large hydrodynamic volume to a therapeutic protein or peptide. This polypeptide adopts a bulky random coil structure, which significantly increases the size of the biopharmaceutical. By this way the typically rapid clearance of the biologically active component via kidney filtration, or in the eye, is retarded by 1-2 orders of magnitude, depending on the length of the PAS tag. Compared with other strategies to prolong the plasma half-life of biologics PASylation technology offers a genetically encoded biopolymer with precise definition which is biochemically inert while biodegradable in the body.