Nano-co-formulations for new combination therapy: Reviving hard-to-deliver drugs for improved and synergistic treatment effect

A large number of both existing and newly developed medicines are poorly water soluble or unstable and therefore difficult to deliver efficiently to the right place in the body. Many highly potent medicines will therefore never benefit the patient. NaDeNo is a Norwegian nanopharmaceutical spin-off company from SINTEF based on more than ten years of research on nanomedicine. NaDeNo's technology solution makes it possible to pack large amounts of active medicine into nanoparticles, which in turn transport the medicine to the disease site in the body in a safer and more efficient way. In this innovation project, NaDeNo will develop new drug candidates by combining several different cancer drugs in one product using nanoparticles. This will enable precisely controlled co-delivery of new drug combinations with a potentially much better efficacy compared to separately administred drugs. The project will be carried out in close collaboration with SINTEF and the Norwegian Radium Hospital/Oslo University Hospital.

NaDeNo is a Norwegian nano-pharmaceutical spin-off company from SINTEF based on > 10 years of research at SINTEF. Our mission is to use nanoformulation as a broad applicable approach to overcome drug delivery hurdles with a vision to unleash the potential of hard-to-deliver drugs and obtain improved treatment effect with less side effects. The innovation forming the basis of this project is a technology for combining multiple drugs in one product with a significantly improved therapeutic and synergistic potential compared to separately administrated drugs. The innovation will enable precisely controlled co-delivery of new drug combinations. The need for better drug delivery solutions has been confirmed by clinical experts and drug developers. The outcome of the project will be new products for treatment of cancer indications with high unmet medical needs, and will trigger substantial market and IP opportunities for NaDeNo. Combination therapies are designed to prevent drug resistance and achieve therapeutic synergy. However, co-delivery of multiple drugs requires delivery of both drugs at the correct doses, to the correct place. This is challenging to achieve with separately administered drugs. Packaging multiple drugs into one nanoparticle product can enable simultaneous drug release in precisely balanced ratios and rates, and in selectively targeted tissues and cells. The key to the realization of the innovation is NaDeNo’s proprietary nanoformulation technology designed for encapsulation of water insoluble drugs. The drugs to be investigated are well known with proven efficacy and complementary mode-of-actions, but have so far had limited clinical use due to low water solubility and/or high toxicity. The NaDeNo innovation opens for reviving these drugs towards novel use and novel combinations and represents a completely new way of using already existing cancer drugs.