Small but mighty: Finnish company flags its nanoparticle technology as potential gamechanger for biologics sector
As drug molecules become more complex so do the options to deliver them. The nanoparticle medicine enabling company said its new technology can form biological nanoparticles as small as 50nm and could become a potential gamechanger in biologics.
The technology, it continued, provides hope for improving the possibilities and probabilities of developing better medicines for patients.
While still in the early stages of development, the Helsinki headquartered company said it has filed a patent application on the technology with the US Patent Office.
“So we are now able to start to talk about our biologics effort publicly,” said Edward Haeggstrom, Nanoform CEO, in a conference call on the company’s Q3 financial results and the company's new biologics capabilities on Friday, November 27.
Nanoform said one of its business target for 2021 is to deliver its first biologics proof of concept project for this new technology with a industry partner.
It has completed two non-GMP lines on the biologics side in addition to the eight CESS small molecule nanoparticle technology non-GMP manufacturing lines.
“We have already discussed our biologics capabilities with potential entities,” said the CEO, adding the biologics applications are an answer to industry requests.
Adding value
“Even though we have a fairly clear understanding of where it could add value both to the patients and to the industry, I am a firm believer that it is better to bring in customers early,” commented Haeggstrom during the call with investors and analysts.
There are significant challenges in drug development in this space, he continued. By working closely with pharma and biotech partners, Nanoform expects to discover how it can support industry in terms of both patient benefit and competitive product differentiation.
The company said potential biologics applications for this nanoparticle technology could be in improving delivery route, in uptake and drug loading capacity in formulations, in enabling new drug combinations, tailoring of release profiles, and implementing lighter infrastructure for drug logistics.
“There is an [ongoing industry] effort to change the delivery route from intravenous to subcutaneous to oral and we think that we can potentially add value in that space. Efforts are also [underway] in terms of [improving] uptake - biologics are sometimes hard to deliver in a way that they are taken up effectively by the body and [then, looking at] drug loading capacity – sometimes you have to make very large injections in order to get the amount of medicine [required] – we think we can address these two. On enabling drug combinations, we think we could potentially do something there, and [then on tailoring] release profiles, we can make them both faster and slower.
“What we do is high tech, but when you combine high tech with low tech sometimes you get very interesting propositions. Globally, there are a lot of people that don’t have [adequate] refrigeration infrastructure. So if we could produce a sterile nanoform powder of biologics we will, head on, address a very big [logistics] problem,” clarified the CEO.
