Sopherion Therapeutics Inc. (now SPHN Holdings, Inc.) has leveraged  its proprietary screening program to design and identify new therapies. The platform is built on a next generation peptide display technology called Minicell Peptide Display™ (MinPep Display or MPD) that is able to circumvent limitations inherent with conventional Phage or Bacterial display technologies. MPD uses minicells…small vesicles produced by bacteria that possess a critical mutation and lack chromosomal DNA. As a result, MPD has the following advantages:

• an enhanced ability to generate peptides from random libraries by suppressing termination codons,
• incorporation of non-natural amino acids,
• and the capability of expressing independent cell surface large non-constrained peptides.

Originally formed as an R&D company employing its proprietary technology platform for drug discovery, Sopherion has utilized its proprietary R&D platform to create a preclinical pipeline.  Recently, Sopherion has decided to spin out or divest  the R&D platform to a separate entity.