Pieris Pharmaceuticals, INC.: insider trades · United States · SEC (Form 4)

About Pieris Pharmaceuticals, INC.

Pieris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a United States-based biopharmaceutical company historically listed on NASDAQ, and its legacy business has since been folded into the post-merger structure completed with Palvella Therapeutics in December 2024. For French, Belgian and Swiss investors, Pieris is best understood as a development-stage biotech story rather than a traditional commercial pharmaceutical company: it was built around a proprietary protein-engineering platform and monetized its science primarily through partnerships, milestones and potential royalties rather than through large direct product sales. The company’s roots trace back to Pieris AG, founded in Germany in 2001, before the business was reorganized into Pieris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in the United States. Its corporate headquarters were historically in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The core scientific asset was the Anticalin® platform, a proprietary biotherapeutics technology designed to create small, engineered proteins that can bind disease targets in a highly selective way. That platform was the foundation for the company’s strategic collaborations and its identity in the public markets. From an operating standpoint, Pieris focused on research and early-to-mid-stage development programs across oncology, immunology and respiratory disease applications. Rather than building a broad in-house commercial franchise, the company pursued a partnering model with larger pharmaceutical groups. Over time, it entered alliances with companies such as AstraZeneca, Genentech, Servier and Pfizer-linked counterparties through earlier transactions, reflecting the platform’s validation by external industry players. In biotech terms, that kind of model can create upside through option value: if a partnered program advances successfully, the company may receive development, regulatory and sales-based payments, but the economics remain highly binary and dependent on clinical execution. Competitive positioning was therefore centered on differentiation. Pieris was not competing as a scale manufacturer or diversified drug marketer; it was competing as a specialized platform company in the broader field of engineered protein therapeutics. Its edge came from the Anticalin technology and the ability to generate multiple candidates against novel targets. Its vulnerability, like many clinical-stage biotechs, was reliance on financing, program success and partner commitment. A key recent development is that Pieris disclosed that the merger with Palvella Therapeutics closed in December 2024, which materially changed the company’s market identity and reporting context. In practical terms, that means investors should view Pieris’ historical profile as a platform biotechnology company from the United States market perspective, with its legacy public-market story now largely defined by the merger outcome rather than by an independent operating pipeline.