Merrion Pharmaceuticals granted US patent for drug delivery system
Merrion Pharmaceuticals, an international speciality pharmaceutical company with novel approaches to oral drug delivery, has been granted a US patent (No 6,780,846) for its membrane translocating peptide drug delivery system.
Merrion Pharmaceuticals, an international speciality pharmaceutical company with novel approaches to oral drug delivery, has been granted a US patent (No 6,780,846) for its membrane translocating peptide drug delivery system.
This patent covers new peptide compounds that can be physically or chemically complexed with an active substance, either a drug or a biological, in order to improve delivery across biological membranes.
The ability of these drug-peptide complexes to cross biological membranes such as the epithelium of the gastro-intestinal tract, is enhanced considerably over the ability of the active substance alone. Using such complexes to improve the delivery of a drug to a specific target tissue both enhances the efficacy and reduces the side effects of the drug. Finally, this delivery technology can also be used to enable the oral administration of compounds that are normally administered only as injectables.
'These peptide complexes have been demonstrated to improve the delivery of therapeutic peptides and other macromolecules across the gastro-intestinal tract, and to improve the delivery of DNA to cells,' said Dr Thomas Leonard, chief scientific officer, Merrion Pharmaceuticals.
Merrion's worldwide headquarters are in Wilmington, NC. The company's r&d and manufacturing operations, Merrion BioPharma, are located in Dublin, Ireland.