About Us
Overview
FivePrime Therapeutics was founded by Lewis T. (“Rusty”) Williams to capitalize on the enormous and largely untapped commercial opportunity of protein therapeutics.  From the outset, and after a thorough analysis of the limitations of other commercial efforts, company scientists determined that the best way to capitalize on this potential was to collect not just some, but all of the body’s secreted proteins and extracellular receptors and to systematically screen them in state-of-the-art, medically relevant cell-based and in vivo assays. In order to achieve our goals we devoted our early years to the following crucial activities:

• Building the world’s most complete, comprehensive and highest quality library of cDNAs capable of directing the production of the entire collection of human extracellular proteins

• Creating high throughput protein production systems capable of producing physiologically active proteins

• Developing predictive, medically relevant cell-based assays to rapidly identify drug candidates

• Inventing an efficient, cost effective and industrial scale technology to test protein drug candidates in in vivo mouse models of human disease

The result of FivePrime’s early, multi-year investment in inventing and integrating these complex technologies is a protein therapeutics discovery platform that is unsurpassed in its comprehensiveness, efficiency, quality and precision. This platform now enables FivePrime to accelerate the identification of potentially ground-breaking protein therapeutics and to move them into development as first-in-class or best-in-class drugs.  FivePrime focuses its efforts in the areas of oncology, immunology and metabolic disease—areas that offer great medical and commercial potential and which have proven to be a rich source of important therapeutics in the past.

Our accomplishments to date include our first drug candidate in clinical development (FP-1039 for cancer, currently in Phase I), the discovery of a completely new cytokine, IL-34, which led to the development of our second development candidate  (FP-1069 for multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and other autoimmune diseases, Phase I initiation planned for mid-2011), and a large number of promising pre-clinical compounds for our internal pipeline as well as a wealth of candidates and targets for our corporate partners.


Key Assets 

A Premier Discovery Platform: Our integrated, comprehensive platform can be used to discover and develop the complete range of protein drugs: hormones, growth factors, cytokines, monoclonal antibodies and ligand traps across many therapeutic areas. 

Rigorous Focus on Clinical Utility:  Our discovery programs are designed around carefully defined target product profiles to ensure that the proteins we discover will be medically relevant and commercially attractive. 

Accelerated Discovery and Development:  Our discovery programs are oriented towards indications that have streamlined preclinical and clinical development paths: target indications with predictive animal models and clinical trials with well defined and measurable endpoints.  

Exceptional Team:  Our team is creative and entrepreneurial and has a passion for translating scientific breakthroughs into medical utility.  We have expertise in all aspects of biologics discovery and development and are actively supported by world-class scientific, clinical, and business advisors.     


At FivePrime we are dedicated to applying our integrated technology platform to accelerate the discovery of what we believe is an untapped mine of innovative protein drugs and antibody targets and to move them through the clinic both on our own and with the world’s leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.