Although many peptides have therapeutic effects against diverse disease, their short half-lives in vivo hurdle their application as drug candidates. To extend the short elimination half-lives of therapeutic peptides, we developed a novel delivery platform for therapeutic peptides using an anti-hapten antibody and its corresponding hapten. We selected cotinine because it is non-toxic, has a well-studied metabolism, and is physiologically absent. We conjugated WKYMVm-NH2, an anti-sepsis therapeutic peptide, to cotinine and showed that the conjugated peptide in complex with an anti-cotinine antibody has a significantly improved in vivo half-life while retaining its therapeutic efficacy. We suggest that this novel delivery platform for therapeutic peptides will be very useful to develop effective peptide therapeutics. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.