A Seven-Year Adventure in Peptide Drug Discovery!
Maestro Therapeutics marked seven years with a PDHC Spotlight — an account of more than forty biotech collaborations, several thousand peptide analogues, and the phrase it chose for what comes next. That phrase is now the title of this Chronicle.
One origin, many collaborations: the Spotlight counts more than forty biotechs worked with since 2019.
Every so often a document explains where a name came from. This one explains ours.
“Tour de Force for Good Medicines” is the phrase Maestro Therapeutics chose for the next phase of its work — an intention to bring other entrepreneurs in peptide drug discovery into the practice. It is also, now, the title of this Chronicle. The phrase first appears in a PDHC Spotlight written by Tomi Sawyer, marking seven years of the firm, and what follows is an account of that document.
A note on what this is. The Spotlight is Maestro’s own publication about Maestro, produced for the Peptide Drug Hunting Consortium. The Chronicle is Maestro’s own publication too. Neither is a disinterested assessment, and this piece does not pretend otherwise — it reports what the Spotlight says, attributes the claims in it to their source, and leaves the reader to weigh them.
Seven years, and what filled them
Maestro Therapeutics was founded in 2019. Since then, by its own account, it has worked with more than forty biotechs — spinouts, early and late-stage companies, and public ones — alongside venture firms and pharma.
The work is preclinical and hands-on. Peptide design across linear and macrocyclic modalities and conjugates of both; lead optimisation toward development candidates; structural biology; computational modelling; peptide chemistry; and the translation of in vitro structure–activity data into in vivo efficacy, pharmacokinetic, safety and drug delivery models. Several thousand peptide analogues have been advanced through these collaborations.
The specifics stay confidential, as the Spotlight acknowledges. What it will say is that the targets have included both extracellular receptors and intracellular proteins, and that the work has typically involved co-structures — X-ray or cryo-EM — alongside computational modelling.
Three people, and six decades between them
Tomi Sawyer took his doctorate at the University of Arizona in 1981, studying under Victor Hruby. Before founding Maestro he was Senior Vice President of Drug Discovery at Ariad Pharmaceuticals, now Takeda; Chief Scientific Officer at Aileron Therapeutics, now Rein Therapeutics; and a Distinguished Scientist at Merck. The Spotlight credits him with more than 660 publications, patents and presentations.
The molecules on that record span modalities and decades: ALRN-6924 (sulanemadlin), the dual MDM2/MDMX antagonist; Iclusig, the Bcr-Abl kinase inhibitor active against Gleevec-resistant disease; ridaforolimus, an mTOR inhibitor; the Src inhibitors AP23464 and AP22408; the HIV-1 protease inhibitor U-81749; the renin inhibitor ditekiren; and two melanocortin-1 receptor superagonists, NDP-MSH — marketed as Scenesse — and cyclo[Cys4,10]-MSH.
Four years ago the firm became three. Thomas Sawyer, who completed a doctorate in molecular and cellular biology at the University of Massachusetts in 2022, and Jonathon Sawyer, who completed one in biochemistry at the University of Arizona the same year, joined after internships with biotechs. The Spotlight puts the team’s collective scientific expertise at more than six decades.
The part that is not chemistry
A consultancy that only did science would be a narrower thing. The Spotlight is candid that a substantial share of the work is business: helping portfolio companies realise internal ambitions, interface with investors, connect with prospective pharma partners, and act as liaison with service providers.
The figures it gives for this are its own. Sawyer is described as having influenced and promoted more than $500 million in biotech funding through venture capital, pharma and IPOs. His earlier work is credited as contributing, in part, to more than $2 billion in market capitalisation growth at Ariad, to the $1.1 billion strategic alliance between Aileron Therapeutics and Roche, and to establishing the first pharma-based integrated Peptide Drug Hunter Network at Merck.
Mentorship runs alongside it — more than a hundred individuals, from undergraduates through to C-level officers, across academia, biotech and pharma. Maestro is a founding partner and Magnum Sponsor of the Peptide Drug Hunting Consortium.
The scholarly output since 2019 is itemised: nine lectures, seventeen seminars, twelve patents, fourteen perspectives, reviews and articles, and six book chapters, published in venues including Nature Communications, the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, JACS and Chemical Science.
What the partners say
The Spotlight closes with comments invited from the biotechs themselves, and they are worth reading as a set rather than individually, because the same two things recur: the technical depth, and the fact that the engagement extends past it.
Michael Fole of Aqur Biosciences describes the Maestro team as having built and now leading his company’s R&D function. Kristen Fortney of BioAge Labs notes strengthened discovery efforts and support with external partners. Giovanni Ferrara of Courage Therapeutics explains why they sought Sawyer out specifically — as the chemist behind NDP-MSH and the first cyclic melanocortin peptides — for work on MC4R agonists.
Tomi is an institution in the peptide field and an exceptional thought partner, possessing an endless reservoir of knowledge paired with an uncanny ability to ask the right questions at the right time.
Natarajan Sethuraman, Chief Scientific Officer, Entrada Therapeutics
Rick Finnegan of 48Hour Discovery says the support has “positively reset the trajectory” of his company over three years. Eric Heil of Ladder Bio credits early recognition of what their spiroligomer platform could do. Tyler Stukenbroeker of Onca Bio values the broader context as much as the answers — “the people, companies, and programs that ultimately make new drugs.” Comments from EpiAxis, Pepticom, Receptor.AI and Vivtex run in the same direction.
The phrase itself
“Tour de Force for Good Medicines” is presented in the Spotlight not as a slogan but as an invitation: a plan to widen the firm beyond three people, to include others who might bring their expertise to the same work.
That the Chronicle now carries the phrase as its title is a decision about where the writing sits — inside that intention rather than beside it.
Source
Tomi Sawyer, with Thomas Sawyer and Jonathon Sawyer. “The Spotlight: A Seven-Year Adventure in Peptide Drug Discovery!” Published by the Peptide Drug Hunting Consortium, peptidedrughunting.org. Corresponding author: Tomi Sawyer, Founder, Chief Drug Hunter and President, Maestro Therapeutics; Thomas Sawyer and Jonathon Sawyer, Heads of Structural Biology and Peptide Chemistry.
The document carries no explicit publication date; it references engagements dated 2026. Testimonials quoted above are attributed within the source to the named individuals at their respective companies.
This Spotlight is Maestro Therapeutics’ own account of its work, published through the Peptide Drug Hunting Consortium. Maestro Chronicle provides the editorial presentation, and the claims and figures reported here are those made in the source document.