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

Et stort antall både eksisterende og nyutviklede medisiner er dårlig vannløselige eller ustabile og derfor vanskelig å levere til rett sted i kroppen på en god måte. Mange svært potente medisiner vil derfor aldri komme pasienten til gode. NaDeNo er et norsk nanofarmasøytisk spin-off-selskap fra SINTEF basert på mer enn ti års forskning på nanomedisin. NaDeNo sin teknologiløsning gjør det mulig å pakke store mengder med aktiv medisin inn i nanopartikler, som igjen frakter medisinen dit den skal virke i kroppen på en tryggere og mer effektiv måte. I dette innovasjonsprosjektet skal NaDeNo utvikle nye legemiddelkandidater ved å kombinere flere ulike kreftmedisiner i ett produkt ved hjelp av nanopartikler. Dette vil åpne opp for helt nye kombinasjoner av legemidler som til sammen vil kunne gi en mye bedre effekt sammenlignet med legemidlene gitt hver for seg. Prosjektet vil gjennomføres i tett samarbeid med SINTEF og Radiumhospitalet/Oslo Universitetssykehus.

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.