Caisson Biotech is putting its drug delivery platform HEPtune on the market along with its U.S. and international patent portfolio in an effort to speed up industry adoption of heparosan, a naturally occurring sugar polymer.
The company said it hired Pickwick Capital Partners to help in the sale. Caisson is funded and managed by Austin, TX-based Emergent Technologies.
HEPtune is a substitute for polyethylene glycol, or PEG, which is commonly used as a vehicle to deliver many kinds of drugs. The wide use of PEG as a delivery mechanism is hampered by antibodies that have become more prevalent with greater exposure, rendering PEG less effective, according to the company.
Caisson’s HEPtune platform uses a similar structure as PEG, but one that is derived from a sugar polymer called heparosan that exists naturally and thus won't be as readily recognized by the body's immune system as a foreign entity.
The platform has been “demonstrated to improve proteolytic activity and half-life for hemophilia Factor VII compared to unconjugated FVII or FVII conjugated with polyethylene glycol (PEG),” Paul Bundschuh, a managing director at Pickwick Capital Partners, said in a statement. “Additionally, HEPtune enables new patent protection for drug conjugates, can lower costs, and reduce the growing concern of immunogenicity with PEG conjugates.”
To entice buyers, Caisson is touting the platform’s potential opportunities in a variety of biologic therapeutic markets as well as for improved delivery of small molecules via nanocarriers.
- here’s the release
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