Nektar Therapeutics (Nektar) is an American biopharmaceutical company. The company was founded in 1990 and is based in San Francisco, California.^[2] The company develops new drug candidates by applying its proprietary PEGylation and advanced polymer conjugate technologies to modify chemical structure of substances.^[3] It is a technology supplier to a number of pharmaceutical companies including Affymax, Amgen, Merck, Pfizer and UCB Pharma, etc.^[2] The company developed the world's first inhalable non-injectable insulin, Exubera, which was awarded as the bronze award by Wall Street Journal for its technological breakthrough.^[4]

The company is engaged in developing a proprietary pipeline of drug candidates for several therapeutic areas including oncology, pain, anti-infectives, anti-viral and immunology.^[2] The company's research and development involve in small molecule and biologic drug candidates. Its drug candidate base consists of naloxegol (Movantik), a Phase III oral opioid antagonist, etirinotecan pegol, a topoisomerase inhibitor under Phase III clinical study as of 2012, NKTR 061, NKTR-181, NKTR-214, etc.^[5]

In 2013, the company was assigned a patent which was developed by the company and other four co-inventors.^[6] The products of the company is served as a supplement to improve the pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, half-life, bioavailability and other areas of drugs for the patients worldwide.^[7] As of March 2014, the company had a market capitalization of $1.7 billion with an enterprise value of $1.67 billion.^[1] As of July 15, 2019, the company had a market cap of $5.88 Billion.