Prosonix and Imperial College London have signed an agreement to collaborate on development of inhaled therapies based on multi-component particles (MCPs) manufactured using Prosonix’s proprietary particle engineering technology. The company will coordinate with Dr. Omar Usmani of the college’s National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI) to perform in vivo and in vitro studies designed to advance MCP candidates for asthma and COPD therapies into preclinical or proof of concept studies by the end of 2013.
The project includes excipient-free particles combining inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) with a long-acting beta-agonist (LABA) and particles combining LABAs with long-acting muscarinic antagonists (LAMA).
Prosonix CEO David Hipkiss commented, “Our strong links with the world’s leading academic research groups focused on respiratory medicine and inhaled drug delivery, such as Dr. Omar Usmani’s group at Imperial College’s NHLI and Professor Rob Price’s team at the University of Bath, alongside our own development team, ensure that Prosonix retains a pre-eminent position in the field. We believe that our particle engineering technology is potentially transformational in enabling the development of novel inhaled combination therapies that deliver significant clinical benefits. Following the recent second close of our £17.1M financing, we believe we are very well placed now to drive the development of our unique MCPs into the clinic.”
Dr. Omar Usmani added, “Co-localization of active components in respiratory drug combinations in the lung may offer the potential for an enhanced clinical effect and therapeutic efficacy that is currently not fully achieved with current combinations. With better treatment of respiratory diseases requiring improved combinations for these reasons, we are extremely interested in Prosonix’ particle engineering approach and multi-component particles to determine whether they can demonstrate clinical synergy and thus provide a novel and effective means of delivering respiratory combinations.”
Read the Prosonix press release.
