University of Nottingham and Lipoxen plc join forces to fight liver disease
Researchers aim to deliver antiviral drugs direct to the liver, by means of nanoparticles and liposomes that will target the affected organ more specifically, to suppress or eliminate the virus, as well as reducing the harmful side effects of untargeted treatment.
(Media-Newswire.com) - The University of Nottingham has joined forces with bio-pharmaceutical company Lipoxen plc to develop improved drug delivery methods for the treatment for viral hepatitis.
Researchers aim to deliver antiviral drugs direct to the liver, by means of nanoparticles and liposomes that will target the affected organ more specifically, to suppress or eliminate the virus, as well as reducing the harmful side effects of untargeted treatment.
Lipoxen plc, a bio-pharmaceutical company specialising in the development of high-value biological therapies including vaccines and oncology drugs, has entered into a research agreement with The University of Nottingham to develop new enhanced formulations of antiviral drugs for the treatment of liver diseases such as viral hepatitis caused by hepatitis C ( HCV ).
The two parties will test novel proprietary formulations based on liposome and nanoparticle delivery in order to achieve enhanced therapeutic effects, by delivering the drugs directly to the liver. This approach is also expected to reduce the toxicity of antiviral drugs used to treat liver disease, by limiting their uptake by surrounding tissues and by red blood cells. The project is receiving funding from the East Midlands' bioKneX Industrial Partnership Scheme.
Hepatitis due to hepatitis C virus infection is a growing problem already affecting 150-200 million people worldwide. In recent years the pharmaceutical industry has invested considerable sums in attempts to develop new drugs for hepatitis C, but unfortunately nearly all of these drugs have failed in clinical development, or have met with only limited commercial success — mainly due to systemic toxicity that has harmful side-effects on other parts of the body besides the liver.
Lipoxen and The University of Nottingham's project is designed to address this systemic toxicity of anti-hepatitis C drugs, which limits the dose at which they can be administered and thereby compromises their efficacy, by engineering their selective delivery to the liver using nanoparticles and liposomes. By improving delivery of the drug specifically to the affected organ, the project seeks to greatly improve the efficacy of anti-hepatitis C drugs by allowing them to be given at higher — ie. more effective — doses.
The two parties will initially work on developing a new proprietary “super generic” formulation of ribavirin, the most commonly used antiviral drug to treat viral hepatitis. This commercially attractive product, which will be based on liposome or nanoparticle delivery, will be used in combination with pegylated–interferon. This combination is the currently accepted optimal regimen for treatment of chronic hepatitis C.
Once this has been achieved the two parties intend to look at improving the delivery of other antiviral drugs for the treatment of hepatitis C that have failed to reach the market due to problems which could potentially be resolved by these novel formulation technologies. Failed anti-hepatitis C drugs include development candidates from, amongst others, GlaxoSmithKline, Boehringer Ingelheim and Wyeth.
Will Irving, Professor of Virology at The University of Nottingham, said: “We are delighted to be involved in this exciting project. If we can succeed in delivering increased doses of ribavirin to the infected liver through our novel delivery systems, it is highly likely we will improve treatment response rates, which are currently limited mostly by the amount of ribavirin an individual patient can tolerate. In addition, such a 'proof of principle' would open up other opportunities for the use of powerful antiviral drugs that are also limited by their systemic toxicities.
“We have a long-term research programme into many aspects of hepatitis C virus infection in The University of Nottingham, and have developed systems in the laboratory for testing drug activity which will underpin our experiments in this project. Lipoxen have an established track record of production of liposomal formulations, so this is an ideal partnership. In addition, we are planning to test and compare polymer nanoparticle delivery vehicles with liposomes, taking advantage of the considerable expertise in nanoparticle technology that exists within The University of Nottingham.”
M. Scott Maguire, Chief Executive Officer of Lipoxen, said: “We are very excited to be working with The University of Nottingham on this project as we believe that by combining our expertise in liposomal and nanoparticle drug formulation with their tissue engineering and molecular virology expertise, we can develop a new “direct to liver” delivery solution to improve the effectiveness of hepatitis C drugs.
“Our initial target will be to demonstrate the value of this new delivery approach using ribavirin, the most widely-used drug globally to treat viral hepatitis.
“Once we have developed this new formulation we believe we can significantly extend its commercial potential in the field of drug delivery to the liver by taking advantage of the opportunity to resurrect several 'near-miss' new drug candidates from major pharma companies that were being developed for the treatment of HCV infection.”
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This story was released on 2008-11-05. Please make sure to visit the official company or organization web site to learn more about the original release date. See our disclaimer for additional information.