BUSINESS INSIGHTS
Aptar Pharma and Fluidda | September 23, 2022
Nanopharm, an Aptar Pharma company and leader in contract research and development services for orally inhaled and nasal drug products announced an exclusive collaboration with Fluidda, a leader in the field of Functional Respiratory Imaging. The companies will leverage their respective proprietary technology platforms to help accelerate U.S. Food & Drug Administration approvals for orally inhaled generic products via the alternative bioequivalence pathway. Nanopharm was acquired by Aptar in 2019, as part of the company’s strategy to expand its services offerings and partner with pharmaceutical companies earlier in the drug development process.
Nanopharm has pioneered the development of the alternative bioequivalence regulatory pathway for U.S. FDA approval of generic OIDPs for Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease using its proprietary in vitro and in silico service platform, SmartTrack™. Fluidda’s proprietary in silico platform FRI delivers quantitative predictions of regional drug deposition in disease state lungs using Computational Fluid Dynamics. The FRI platform provides critical information to help understand the availability and activity of the drug at the site of action in the lungs, when complemented by Nanopharm’s local lung physiologically-based pharmacokinetic model platform and its in vitro data.
This novel approach is intended to allow pharma companies to file Abbreviated New Drug Application dossiers without the need to perform time-consuming, costly and often unpredictable clinical end-point studies. Similarly, it can support 505(b)(2) filings, by derisking and abbreviating clinical studies.
“We are pleased to solidify our relationship with Fluidda and its world-leading FRI technology. A company would have to spend several years to achieve the current combined expertise and experience of Nanopharm and Fluidda. The collaboration between Nanopharm and Fluidda has the potential to revolutionize this arduous regulatory pathway,”
Dr. Jag Shur, Vice President, Science & Technology at Nanopharm
Having already worked together closely for a number of years, Nanopharm and Fluidda have gained a unique insight into the complex and continually evolving regulatory requirements. This exclusive collaboration deepens the relationship between Fluidda and Nanopharm, benefiting both patients and customers with an uncompromised and holistic approach in developing the scientific rationale to demonstrate bioequivalence using only in vitro and in silico methodologies. The first potential approval of an OIDP using the alternative bioequivalence approach is pending, and, when approved, will further validate Nanopharm’s SmartTrack™ as the go-to solution for alternative bioequivalence studies and should accelerate demand for the companies’ collective services.
With momentum building for the transition to new lower global warming potential (GWP) propellants for pMDIs, SmartTrack™ will also help companies to understand and modulate the impact of these new propellants on drug deposition and dissolution in the lungs, giving confidence in the performance of the reformulated product before embarking on any necessary clinical studies.
Dr. Jan de Backer, CEO of Fluidda, stated, “Fluidda has already demonstrated the applicability of its FRI platform to provide more objective data for evaluating and administering inhaled drug products accurately. Nanopharm’s unique SmartTrack™ platform provides us with clinically-relevant input data without having to actually go into the clinic, which really adds another level of confidence to the models, and provides an integrated perspective.”
Guillaume Brouet, Vice President, Analytical, Regulatory and Scientific Affairs at Aptar Pharma, commented, “Aptar Pharma is delighted to collaborate with Fluidda on this important development, which reinforces our mission to help customers derisk and accelerate their drug product development programs.”
About Aptar
Aptar Pharma is part of AptarGroup, Inc., a global leader in the design and manufacturing of a broad range of drug delivery, consumer product dispensing and active material science solutions and services. Aptar’s innovative solutions and services serve a variety of end markets including pharmaceutical, beauty, personal care, home care, food and beverage. Aptar Pharma’s analytical, laboratory and regulatory services add value at every stage of the drug development process, accelerating and de-risking the program along the way. Nanopharm, an Aptar Pharma company, is a leading provider of specialized analytical and product development services, with a focus on orally inhaled and nasal drug products. Aptar is headquartered in Crystal Lake, Illinois and has 13,000 dedicated employees in 20 countries.
About Fluidda
FLUIDDA, founded in 2005, is the world leader in the field of Functional Respiratory Imaging (FRI). This technique combines HRCT scans and Computational Fluid Dynamics technology (CFD), which offers vast improvements by making clinical trials shorter, faster and thus, more cost effective. FRI also helps patients and healthcare providers in offering a unique entry point in personalized medicine, by optimizing diagnosis, monitoring disease progression and the effects of therapy including accurate assessment of the deposition of inhalation medication. Fluidda’s mission is to optimize treatment pathways, reduce healthcare costs and to limit the go-to-market time of respiratory drugs, pulmonology medical devices and therapies. Fluidda has offices in Belgium, the United States and Portugal.
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BUSINESS INSIGHTS
Aditxt | July 11, 2022
Aditxt, Inc. a biotech innovation company developing and commercializing technologies focused on monitoring and reprogramming the immune system, today announces that its therapeutic program Adimune™, has successfully completed a toxicology study that indicates the safety profile of ADI™-100, the Company’s immunotherapeutic technology drug that addresses rejection of transplanted organs, skin allografting, autoimmune diseases and allergies.
The toxicology findings will provide vital supporting evidence when the Company files an Investigational New Drug application with the regulatory agencies.
“Our drug is truly antigen-specific in the treatment of autoimmune diseases. In preparation of the clinical study, we performed a toxicology study and found: no premature death, no signs of local intolerance, no test item-related influence on clinical signs, body weight and body weight gains, food consumption, biochemistry or urinalysis. No anti-nuclear antibodies, no macroscopic post-mortem findings, no changes in histopathology were noted, confirming the safety profile of our drug product, which we have seen in all pre-clinical experiments before.”
Joachim-Friedrich Kapp, M.D., Ph.D., Aditxt senior vice president of Clinical Development-Autoimmunity
ADI™-100 consists of two DNA molecules, which together restore immune tolerance in autoimmune disease and establish tolerance in allogeneic skin transplantation applied in large skin wounds. Modulating the immune system by restoring/inducing tolerance is a unique mechanism of action, with a potentially huge efficacy and safety benefit for the patients affected because there is no immunosuppression involved.
“These findings are very promising,” said Dr. Kapp.
Amro Albanna, co-founder and CEO of Aditxt, said the encouraging toxicology results of ADI™-100 illustrate the Company’s commitment to advancing promising technologies to address rising unmet needs of patients with autoimmune diseases and those needing life-saving organ transplantation procedures.
“We are excited about the progress Adimune™ is making towards human trials, which represents a significant inflection point for the program and Aditxt as a whole,” Albanna said. “Adimune™ is an example of our business model accelerating promising innovation into commercialization and monetization.”
“In addition, and separately, we clearly demonstrated that our drug does not display any general immunosuppressive effect,” Dr. Kapp explains. “This was shown in safety studies, when using a Listeria model for infection and a melanoma model for potential effects on tumor growth. As one could have predicted, considering the mechanism of action, there was no interference with the immune system and its capacity to fight infection or tumor disease, at all. These findings are very promising and certainly will support our story when filing the IND.”
About Aditxt
Aditxt is a biotech innovation company developing and commercializing technologies focused on monitoring and reprogramming the immune system. Aditxt’s immune monitoring technologies are designed to provide a personalized immune profile. Aditxt’s immune reprogramming technologies, currently preclinical, are being developed to retrain the immune system to induce tolerance to address rejection of transplanted organs, autoimmune diseases, and allergies.
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PHARMA TECH
Cadence | July 26, 2022
Cadence Design Systems, Inc. announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held OpenEye Scientific Software, Inc., a leading provider of computational molecular modeling and simulation software being widely and increasingly used by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies for drug discovery.
The addition of OpenEye’s technologies and experienced team with its deep scientific expertise accelerates Cadence’s Intelligent System Design™ strategy and expands its total addressable market bringing Cadence’s computational software expertise to apply proven algorithmic, simulation and solver advances to life sciences.
Technological advancements, coupled with the rising demand for new drugs across a range of diseases, are driving increased demand for computational drug design. The growing utilization of computational techniques in drug discovery for pharmacology, chemical synthesis and drug screening to study the 3D structure of molecules is a major factor fostering the growth of the global biosimulation market, which has an estimated TAM of $2B and predicted to have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 15% over the next five years.
Biosimulations are a critical tool for pharmaceutical research as they provide atomic-level insight into molecular interactions, and there’s a growing demand for high-performance simulation of larger biological systems over longer time scales.
Cadence continues executing its Intelligent System Design strategy and has successfully leveraged its computational software expertise to expand into the system analysis space to address the electromagnetics, thermal and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) challenges in the high-tech electronics, aerospace and defense, and automotive sectors. Cadence is now extending that computational software core competency to molecular modeling and simulation that is targeted to life sciences.
OpenEye, an industry leader in computational molecular design, has pioneered physics-based approaches and the cloud-native Orion® software platform to accelerate advances in human health. The acquisition allows pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to benefit from more robust drug discovery solutions that combine OpenEye’s innovative molecular modeling and simulation software solutions for drug discovery with Cadence’s algorithmic and solver expertise, efficient large data management infrastructure, and leading AI/ML and cloud solutions.
OpenEye’s products are used by 19 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies globally—including Pfizer and AstraZeneca—as well as numerous biotechnology companies and academic institutions. Orion, OpenEye’s market-leading cloud-native software-as-a service (SaaS) platform, is growing rapidly as pharmaceutical and biotechnology users embrace its flexibility and scalability to perform complex molecular calculations on a large scale.
“Drug discovery is an increasingly complex process that requires significant investment in research and development. The pending acquisition of OpenEye, with its scientifically tested methodologies and expertise, accelerates Cadence’s Intelligent System Design strategy with our entry into a new system domain of life sciences. Cadence’s deep computational software expertise drives further innovation in algorithms that enhance the reliability, efficiency and speed of molecular simulations. We look forward to welcoming such an accomplished team and are delighted to accelerate innovation and improve research and development productivity in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry.”
Dr. Anirudh Devgan, president and CEO of Cadence
“We founded OpenEye to stretch the boundaries of what’s possible in computational drug discovery,” said Dr. Anthony Nicholls, CEO of OpenEye Scientific. “Our 3D search technology, programming toolkits, and more recently, our cloud platform, Orion, have led the industry for more than 25 years, and this opportunity to join with Cadence to pursue even greater scale and accuracy is simply amazing. We foresee a time when pharmaceutical design, no matter the modality, is predominantly computational. The realization of that goal with our skills and Cadence’s resources and expertise is going to have a profound impact on human health.”
Under the terms of the definitive agreement, Cadence will pay approximately $500 million in cash. The acquisition is expected to contribute immaterial revenue this year and about $40 million in fiscal 2023. It is expected to close in the third quarter of 2022, subject to completion of Hart-Scott-Rodino regulatory review and customary closing conditions.
About Cadence
Cadence is a pivotal leader in electronic systems design, building upon more than 30 years of computational software expertise. The company applies its underlying Intelligent System Design strategy to deliver software, hardware and IP that turn design concepts into reality. Cadence customers are the world’s most innovative companies, delivering extraordinary products from chips to boards to complete systems for the most dynamic market applications, including hyperscale computing, 5G communications, automotive, mobile, aerospace, consumer, industrial and healthcare. For eight years in a row, Fortune magazine has named Cadence one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For.
About OpenEye Scientific
OpenEye Scientific is an industry leader in computational molecular design through rapid, robust and scalable software, toolkits, technology and design services, and Orion®, the only cloud-native fully integrated software-as-a-service molecular modeling platform that runs on Amazon Web Services. Combining unlimited computation and storage with powerful tools for data sharing, visualization and analysis in an open development platform, Orion offers unprecedented capabilities for the advancement of pharmaceuticals, biologics, agrochemicals, and flavors and fragrances. Founded in 1997, OpenEye Scientific is a privately held company headquartered in Santa Fe, N.M., with offices in Boston, Mass.; Cologne, Germany; and Tokyo, Japan.
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