Nanoform, a nanoparticle medicine enabling company, and Orion Corporation, a Finnish pharmaceutical company, have collaborated to apply Nanoform's CESS technology to new chemical entities.
Building on an existing relationship, this collaboration will utilise Nanoform’s proprietary CESS technology to improve the bioavailability and solubility of selected early-development compounds, increasing the likelihood of drugs entering clinical development.
Many new chemical entities struggle to progress into clinical development due to their physicochemical properties and respective solubility and bioavailability challenges. This issue is expected to exacerbate as molecular complexity increases in drug discovery. APIs nanoformed using the CESS process have shown promise for overcoming this challenge by increasing the powder dissolution and even intrinsic solubility of the compounds.
As a company that covers the entire life-cycle from research and development, to commercial manufacturing and marketing of pharmaceuticals, Orion is continuously developing new drugs and treatment methods. This collaboration with Nanoform presents an opportunity to enhance the company’s formulation process and provide poorly soluble molecules with a path to clinical trials.
“Orion has a long and successful pharmaceutical history and is keen to evaluate new innovations. Together we look forward to combined success,” said Prof Edward Hæggström, CEO of Nanoform.
“We have known Nanoform for many years - in its early days before the company considered acquiring GMP status we collaborated by providing a drug development perspective on this promising technology on a small scale," said Dr Juha Kiesvaara, VP of Global Pharmaceutical Research at Orion Corporation. "Materials science and particle engineering are vital to the success of pharmaceutical development and by utilising nanoparticles in the range that Nanoform can produce we see great opportunity to simplify the formulation process, develop optimal products, and enable poorly soluble molecules to progress into clinic."
Kiesvaara explained that producing tailored nanoparticles smaller than 200nm from solution, in a controlled and reproducible manner, with good yield and without the need for excipients is challenging to do by current pharmaceutical manufacturing techniques or processes. He said that now Nanoform has a path to clinical development with their upcoming GMP facility he is excited to see how they can add value to Orion’s drug development products.