Metabolic diseases, including obesity, affect hundreds of millions worldwide and account for one in eight healthcare dollars spent in the US. Natural regulatory peptide hormones would make excellent clinical compounds but suffer from low metabolic stability. Anchored in work originaly undertaken at Tufts, the Velum platform technology re-engineers the "business end" of natural peptide hormone molecules, making them both stable and equipotent as the native compound. Analogues of the human hormones currently in clinical use recapitulate the full potency of the native compound but require extensive protein engineering and sometimes compromise key pharmacological properties. Their analogues are stable and retain the full potency of the natural substances. This innovation extends to all peptide hormones that act by related mechanisms. In addition, any template that has compromised enzymatic stability to hydrolysis is a potential compound that they can rescue. ]]
