OBG subsidiary Ayrton Saunders announced that the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has approved a Type II variation to the 2014 marketing authorization for the Voke nicotine inhaler, which is approved for general sales as a nicotine replacement therapy. According to the Ayrtons web site, the company “has completely redeveloped the original product delivering improved consumer experience including a 50% reduction on the retail price.” The company says that it is now seeking partners in order to launch the product in the UK and for potential future launches in other markets.
The Voke breath-actuated inhaler was initially developed by Kind Consumer and licensed to British American Tobacco subsidiary Nicovations, which had contracted with Bespak for manufacture of the inhaler. In 2017, Nicovations canceled its agreement with Bespak citing a clause that allowed for cancellation if Voke had not been launched commercially by 31 December 2016 and returned the rights to Kind Consumer. In 2019, Kind Consumer announced that it had launched direct sales of the Voke product in the UK through a web site.
OBG acquired the Voke inhaler after Kind Consumer became insolvent in 2020 and redesigned the device using IP related to Senzer’s SiDD (Systemic inhaled Delivery Device) that OBG acquired after Senzer failed in 2021. Ayrtons Director Gerry O’Brien tells OINDPnews that the next generation device “uses Voke’s original underlying IP but is a re-engineered product that uses a completely different manufacturing and molding process which allows for much more consistent and robust manufacture of the device. The performance of this device from a regulatory CMC perspective is the same as the original product.”
O’Brien says that partners could market the newly approved version of the device as a new Voke product or as something else: “With respect to the Voke branding we are cognizant that we are a development and partnering business, not marketers, and we see the choice of brand name and launch very much being with our future partners. We happy for Voke to be used or a new name to be developed.”
Read the Ayrton Saunders press release.
