In biomedical research, the smallest details matter. That includes the quality of researchers’ peptides, small proteins that can be used to study cellular processes, develop new drugs, and investigate disease mechanisms. Any kind of contamination can lead to unreliable results, pose safety risks, and potentially compromise entire studies.
So when research scientist Johnathon Anderson found himself struggling to find pure, sterile peptides for the studies he was heading up, he was surprised and frustrated.
“There wasn't a readily available source of peptides at a higher level of quality you need for some of the animal studies and pre-clinical studies,” said Anderson, who’s also an associate professor at the University of California (UC) Davis School of Medicine and a researcher with the university’s Institute for Regenerative Cures.
That initial roadblock became the inspiration for Anderson’s recently launched company, Peptide Systems, in Folsom, California. The peptides it now provides meet the rigorous standards that biomedical researchers need for their studies. The company promises pure peptides, free of microbial or chemical contaminants.
And these peptides could very well play a role in the development of exciting, life-changing therapies.
The Promise of Peptides
When researchers investigate patients with certain diseases or disorders, one of the things they explore is whether a patient’s peptide levels are too high or too low. For example, a patient with high levels of C-peptides (produced in the pancreas) might have type 2 diabetes, Cushing's syndrome, or low potassium levels, among other conditions. Low C-peptide levels could be a sign of type 1 diabetes, Addison’s disease, or a severe infection. The next question for researchers is whether regulating a patient’s peptide level could result in a better health outcome.
“This research into peptides is part of this new wave of biologic therapies that’s trying to take components, things that are naturally found in your body — peptides, proteins, stem cells — and apply them to improve health, as opposed to administering a foreign substance to the body (traditional pharmaceutical therapy),” Anderson said.
This approach is what led to today’s insulin treatments for diabetes.
“It’s great that drug researchers were able to develop a very cost-effective way to manufacture a small peptide like insulin,” Anderson said. “Now there’s a very clean, very safe, natural source of insulin to provide patients.”
There’s tremendous optimism among researchers about the potential to develop even more beneficial therapies harnessing peptides, which have also been shown to regulate weight loss, sleep quality, muscle gains, skin health, injury healing, anxiety, and cognitive function.
Researchers are also excited about new technologies that allow peptides to be manufactured in a much cleaner, more efficient way, like Peptide Systems does, making them more cost-effective to develop than other biologics, such as proteins and stem cells.
Offering Hope
For Anderson, the desire to help biomedical researchers succeed, even as he researches new medical treatments himself, is rooted in a journey that dates back decades.
“When I was younger, shortly after high school, my mother passed away from cancer, which was unexpected and rough on me as a kid. It eventually sparked an interest in wanting to develop new drugs to try to help patients who are battling cancer and other diseases.”
Anderson, who has a doctorate in integrative genetics and genomics from University of California, Davis, has written more than 20 scientific peer-reviewed publications that have been cited more than 11,000 times and has been a co-inventor on patent applications for regenerative medicine therapies for stem cell (which has the unique ability to repair and regenerate tissues) and exosome (a tiny structure that plays a role in cell-to-cell communication) therapies.
His current research includes running a stem cell treatment trial at the UC Davis Medical Center for patients who, because of head and neck cancer treatment, struggle to swallow.
“The combination of chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery can get rid of the tumor, which obviously you want, but it can also damage some of the healthy tissue in that area, despite best efforts to avoid that as much as possible,” Anderson said.
The swallowing issue, dysphasia, significantly diminishes patients’ quality of life.
“We don't think about it a lot, but we're constantly swallowing saliva throughout the day. Imagine someone who’s choking on that every couple of minutes, constantly having trouble getting food down. It also affects their ability to be social, going out to dinner, sharing meals. It really hits the patients hard, and there’s not a lot of good, effective treatments out there right now.”
The trial Anderson is leading aims to discover if stem cell therapy can help with that. Patients are being treated with their own cells. A new technology uses a tiny sample, the size of a grain of rice, to grow millions of muscle stem cells and progenitor cells (early descendants of stem cells that can differentiate into specific cell types), freeze them, and ship them back to the study team. Physicians then inject the newly grown stem cells around the base of participating patients’ tongues.
“The idea being that these muscle stem cells, once they’re injected, will engraft and infuse in the musculature at the base of the tongue, and this will add extra strength, which will help the patients with the initiation of their swallow,” Anderson said.
“Some of the patients are so incredibly excited just to participate in the study, that there’s a ray of hope to hold on to. On an emotional level, it’s hard to do better than that, to talk to someone whose life you’ve played some small role in potentially helping.”
Becoming an Entrepreneur
While Anderson’s passions for problem-solving and helping others are excellent foundations for entrepreneurship, he still has found the new pathway he’s on as a business owner a challenging one.
Progressing from his inspiration for Peptide Systems to being fully operational in September 2024 was an extensive process that included finding and partnering with a respected manufacturer capable of producing peptides according to Anderson’s specifications. Now, every batch of peptides Anderson’s company receives from its partner undergoes third-party testing by a Federal Drug Administration-registered lab to verify that it meets Peptide Systems’ quality standards and is contaminant-free.
With those key steps accomplished, Anderson has been forced as an entrepreneur to dive into such new territories as website development, marketing, search engine optimization, and other business-centric tasks. Each has taken him outside of his comfort zone at times, he said, but it’s been worth it.
“Based on the conversations that I’ve had with our customers to date, they’re genuinely excited about having a product like ours on the market, and how that frees them up to pursue research. Maybe one day, some of these peptides could eventually become an FDA-approved drug, potentially improving patients’ lives down the road.”
Striking a Blow Against Stress
Throughout this process, it has helped Anderson to have a stressbuster he loves: Jiu-Jitsu. For years, he’s been training at El Dorado Hills Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
“It’s just incredibly fun,” Anderson said. “If you think of little boys roughhousing, it’s like that — natural, playful fun in a very safe environment.”
From what he’s observed, many people who haven’t been drawn to other sports love Jiu-Jitsu, partially because of the mental aspect: determining how to break free of a hold or overcome an opponent.
“It is such a cool puzzle, and it’s almost like a conversation or a chess match back and forth: you do this move, and then that leaves this open. There are thousands and thousands of moves.
“The net result of it is if you train Jiu-Jitsu in the morning, you are just hyper-relaxed for the rest of the day because you got any built-up tension, stress, anxiety physically excavated from your body just by having such a fun workout.”
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