Quanta Biodesign
Proprietary discrete polyethylene glycol (dPEG®) pegylation reagents
Quanta BioDesign, Ltd., was founded in 1997 by Paul D. Davis, Ph.D. under the name BioOrganic Technologies, LLC. In Spring of 1999, they changed their name to Quanta BioDesign, Ltd., in order to better reflect their company mission.
Quanta BioDesign was founded for the purpose of developing and commercializing an extensive line of products for companies involved in drug discovery and diagnostic development programs. These products are based on our proprietary discrete polyethylene glycol (dPEG®) chemistries, including our unique processes for making these important compounds. Our single molecular weight ethylene glycol conjugation technology, dPEG®, can eliminate common problems found in the development of diagnostic and therapeutic products, such as aggregation and non-specific interactions, poor water solubility, poor delivery, delivery issues/options, short serum half life, toxicity and antigenicity. The dPEG®product line is a unique technology platform which can be custom tailored to meet specific physical, chemical and morphological requirements in a broad array of diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Chemistry applications which incorporate dPEG®products include conjugations, simple chemical modifications, cross linking, biotinylation, signal amplification, modification of biological therapeutics and peptide synthesis. Recently we introduced dPEG®products that offer new delivery options as well. We are involved in developing new cross-linking and labeling chemistries that incorporate the dPEG®technology, and will allow for completely new approaches to existing opportunities in these same areas of therapeutic and diagnostic development, and will revolutionize many of these areas as the new generations of drugs and diagnostics evolve.
What Is A DPEG®?
The term “dPEG®” is Quanta BioDesigns trademarked acronym for “discrete poly(ethylene glycol)” or “discrete PEG”. Each of our products represents a single compound with a unique, specific, single molecular weight (MW) PEG synthesized de novo from pure, small units (e.g., triethylene glycol or tetraethylene glycol). In our numbering system, we name compounds as dPEG®nn, where nn stands for the number of oxygen atoms in the spacer unit. We do this in order to simplify the naming of the compounds. Our catalog has the exact structure of the single compound. Thus, for example, product number 10244, amino-dPEG®4-acid, has an amino group on one end, four (4) ethylene oxide units, and a carboxylic acid group on the other end, as shown below:
Some people prefer the term “monodisperse” to describe these PEG compounds. While not an inappropriate term, “monodisperse” implies either that
- the compounds are single compounds purified from a polymeric mixture, or
- there is only one compound formed from a polymeric process, which is purely a theoretical concept. We prefer the term “discrete”, since these compounds are synthesized as single MW compounds from pure starting materials via standard organic methodology. A discrete PEG is a single compound having no other PEG homologues in it.