Press Release
The Center for Peptide Design is established (opens in a new tab)
A new interdisciplinary center dedicated to the design and engineering of peptides for humanity launches at the University of Pennsylvania.
We design peptides for the benefit of humanity
Our impact in numbers
- 3 billionPeptides Discovered
Novel sequences explored computationally.
- 6,000Peptides Synthesized
Successfully produced in our automated synthesis pipeline.
- 100Peptides Validated Preclinically
Molecules advanced to in vivo validation.
Research Area
Medicine
Peptide therapeutics for what current drugs cannot treat: resistant infections, cancer, and beyond.
Sustainability
Developing peptides for crop protection, rare earth recovery, carbon capture, and environmental remediation.
Materials
Engineering peptide-based organic semiconductors and materials for batteries, bioelectronics, drug delivery, tissue repair, and beyond.
Technologies
Integrating AI, chemistry, and high-throughput experimentation to accelerate peptide discovery, design, and validation—and build the next generation of peptide technologies.
Latest updates
Campus & Community
Peptaris receives inaugural investment from Penn's StartUP Fund (opens in a new tab)
Peptaris, a Center for Peptide Design spinout, is one of the first three companies funded by Penn's new $10 million StartUP Fund, which backs companies built on research from across Penn's twelve schools. Co-founded by César de la Fuente and Marcelo Der Torossian Torres, Peptaris is building an AI-driven platform to design and optimize peptide therapeutics. This is the Center's work moving from discovery to pre-clinical development.
What’s Peptide Design?
Peptides are short chains of amino acids. They're large enough to act precisely on biological targets and small enough to make by chemistry.
Peptide design means creating new molecules with a purpose. We use AI to discover and propose sequences, chemistry to build and refine them, and experiments to test how they perform. Each round of testing guides the next round of design. The goal is to develop peptides with the properties needed to treat disease, build new materials, protect crops, and more.
Center for Peptide Design
A global hub for peptide design
We bring together chemists, biologists, engineers, clinicians and computer scientists from around the world to work as one team. Here, AI, chemistry and biology meet at the same bench. Ideas move from model to molecule to impact faster than any single discipline could manage alone.
We welcome researchers, students and partners from every country and every field who want to design peptides for the benefit of humanity.
What peptides can do
Peptides are among the smallest functional molecules of life. In nature, they fight infections, target tumors, boost the immune system, regulate sleep and shape how the brain works and behaves.
Imagine if we could design them.
That's what we do. We use AI to explore sequences evolution never tried and chemistry to build them, and we test each one. The result is peptides made on purpose to heal, protect and build.
From discovery to impact
Designed at the Center, translated through the companies it creates. Our first spinout sits a short walk away, across the Schuylkill.
Center forPeptide Design
Johnson Pavilion · University of Pennsylvania
3610 Hamilton Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104
Peptaris (opens in a new tab) *
AI-designed peptide therapeutics
Lilly Gateway Labs · 2300 Market St, Philadelphia, PA 19103
Founded 2025 · peptaris.com (opens in a new tab)
Map tiles © Esri, HERE, Garmin and OpenStreetMap contributors (opens in a new tab).