Decoy Therapeutics Reaches Global Access Commitment Agreement to Focus on Development of a Globally Accessible, Scalable Peptide-Conjugate Manufacturing Platform

Decoy Therapeutics will use the platform, with funding support from the Gates Foundation, to provide widespread access to peptide-conjugate antivirals from Decoy's IMP³ACT™ platform for low- and middle-income countries.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. and HOUSTON, Jan. 13, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Decoy Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: DCOY) (Decoy, or the Company), a preclinical biopharmaceutical that is engineering the next generation of peptide conjugate therapeutics, announces that the development of a flexible, globally accessible manufacturing platform for peptide-conjugate antivirals is a key 'funded development' of Decoy's Global Access Commitment Agreement (GACA) with the Gates Foundation. 

"We are excited to enter this new phase of our work funded by the Gates Foundation to support making countermeasures for emerging pathogens accessible to people in low- and middle-income countries," stated Decoy Chief Scientific Officer Barbara Hibner. "This new capability will establish a distributed network of manufacturing facilities with the ability to respond rapidly to viral outbreaks anywhere in the world. It will also support Decoy's future commercial efforts by providing the ability to manufacture our antiviral inhibitors, and ultimately other classes like peptide drug conjugates for oncology indications, for global markets."

Decoy is creating an easily transferable manufacturing capability for peptide-conjugate antiviral fusion inhibitors designed on its IMP³ACT platform that can rapidly advance therapeutic products from laboratory to commercial scale. This manufacturing capability will be designed to enable cost-efficient, rapid and repeatable scale-up on standard commercial peptide-synthesis machinery, thus enabling a network of global manufacturing facilities that can be flexibly configured to meet demand.

"Our proprietary IMP³ACT platform allows for the rapid computational design and manufacturing of innovative peptide-conjugate therapeutics that have broad activity across entire viral families, or even across multiple viral families," said Peter Marschel, Decoy Chief Business Officer. "Our vision, 'design-for-manufacturing', allows us to minimize the marginal cost and regulatory effort to scale-up manufacturing for new therapeutics. We see this as a key element of an end-to-end platform that can design, develop and commercialize novel peptide-conjugate therapeutics with unprecedented speed."

Decoy is working with a leading contract manufacturing organization based in the U.S. and Europe to establish the manufacturing capability. The platform will be validated using Decoy's intranasal pan-coronavirus fusion inhibitor funded from the same grant, which demonstrates the 'design-for-manufacturing' capability of Decoy's proprietary IMP³ACT platform. The intranasal pan-coronavirus inhibitor is being developed as a conveniently administered, broad-acting, antiviral to prevent and mitigate infections from multiple coronaviruses in immune-compromised and high-risk populations. 

The Company is focused on advancing its pipeline of peptide conjugate therapeutics engineered through its IMP³ACT platform that reduces the complexity of drug development and manufacturing. During the next 12 months, Decoy expects to advance its lead asset, a pan-coronavirus antiviral, to the filing of an Investigational New Drug (IND) application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and to make progress on other programs including a novel broad-acting antiviral to treat flu, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and a peptide drug conjugate targeting GI cancers.

About Decoy's Peptide Conjugate Technology

Decoy's drug design engine uses the power of computational tools and fast peptide synthesis technology pioneered in the laboratory of Brad Pentelute, Ph.D., Professor of Chemistry at MIT and Decoy co-founder, to rapidly engineer and synthesize novel antivirals that directly target highly conserved viral machinery. Its proprietary IMP³ACT peptide-conjugate drug design and manufacturing platform leverages machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) tools. IMP³ACT allows for the rapid computational design and manufacturing of innovative peptide-conjugate therapeutics including rapid response to novel viral pathogens including H5N1 avian flu. Peptide conjugates are a new class of drug, perhaps best known for the popular diabetes and weight loss medications, that takes advantage of the strong activity and selectivity of peptides, and improves their targeting and durability by adding a lipid molecule. Decoy Therapeutics is expanding the use of this new drug class to indications including infectious diseases, cancer, and other therapeutic areas.

The IMP³ACT platform leverages peptide chemistry to design α-helical peptides using computational and ML tools. These peptides are transformed into multimeric conjugates by chemically linking a defined number of copies to lipids or other suitable membrane anchor moieties, enhancing their drug-like properties and dosing flexibility with extended pharmacokinetics. Decoy's technology has produced peptide conjugates effective in vitro against multiple human coronaviruses, including all SARS-CoV-2 major variants of concern to date, and against RSV A, RSV B and hPIV3, and in vivo against the SARS-CoV-2 delta variant. By integrating machine learning algorithms in peptide design and synthesis, Decoy's platform accelerates the creation of lead molecules for preclinical evaluation, simultaneously optimizing peptide conjugates for enhanced affinity, binding specificity, resistance to proteases, pharmacokinetic properties and manufacturability at early commercial scale.

About Decoy Therapeutics, Inc.

Decoy Therapeutics is a preclinical-stage biotechnology company that is leveraging ML and AI tools alongside high-speed synthesis techniques to rapidly design, engineer and manufacture peptide conjugate drug candidates that target serious unmet medical needs. The company's initial pipeline is focused on respiratory viruses and GI cancers. Decoy has attracted financing from institutional investors as well as significant non-dilutive capital from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Seed Fund, the Google AI startup program and the NVIDIA Inception program among other sources. The company has also received QuickFire Challenge award funding provided by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) through BLUE KNIGHT™, a collaboration between Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JLABS and BARDA within the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 regarding Decoy, including expected achievement of milestones for its lead asset and future prospects of Decoy. These statements may discuss goals, intentions and expectations as to future plans, trends, events, results of operations or financial condition, or otherwise, based on current beliefs of the management of Decoy, as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to, management. Forward-looking statements generally include statements that are predictive in nature and depend upon or refer to future events or conditions, and include words such as "may," "will," "can," "should," "would," "expect," "anticipate," "plan," "likely," "believe," "estimate," "project," "intend," and other similar expressions. Statements that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on current beliefs and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties and are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results could differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement as a result of various factors, including, without limitation: the risk that the Company will not obtain sufficient financing to execute on their business plans and risks related to Decoy's products and development plans, including unanticipated issues with any IND application process and the potential of the IMP³ACT™ platform. Readers are urged to carefully review and consider the various disclosures made by the Company in its reports filed with the SEC, including its Current Report on Form 8-K filed on August 22, 2025, its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024, as revised or supplemented by its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other documents filed with the SEC. If one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or if the underlying assumptions prove incorrect, Decoy's actual results may vary materially from those expected or projected. 

SOURCE Decoy Therapeutics, Inc