Nanologica joins €10m EU project to develop tuberculosis treatments
GSK leads four-year Orchid project
Nanologica, a Swedish developer of carrier materials using nanotechnology, has become a partner in the Orchid alliance. This EU-funded project brings together tuberculosis (TB) expertise from academia, government research centres, non-profit organisations and biotech companies.
Nanologica’s first goal is to deal with formulation problems associated with the poor water solubility of GSK’s and other partners’ TB compounds.
‘Nanologica’s carrier materials are instrumental to the pharmaceutical industry,’ said Andreas Bhagwani, chief executive of Nanologica. ‘Our approach can improve the formulation and solubility of water-insoluble active pharmaceutical compounds, to control their pharmacokinetic parameters, such as bioavailability. With this, we can achieve specific targeted release of active compounds.’
Nanologica specialises in developing nanoporous structures as carrier materials for a variety of applications, ranging from drug delivery to cosmetics. The patented technology enables the company to create structures that have novel properties and functions based on their size, shape and composition. It is based on nanotechnology research from the universities of Stockholm and Uppsala.
Nanologica’s research team and other leading scientists worldwide will combine their expertise to investigate the potential of three areas of research, all of which have shown potential against TB. These are:
- β-lactams – new evidence suggests that a novel approach could make these broad-spectrum antibiotics effective against TB. This approach will design new animal models to demonstrate their potential.
- New InhA inhibitors – GSK, in collaboration with the TB Alliance, has recently identified a chemical series that can inhibit recognised known TB target (InhA), which is essential for the bacterium’s survival. Tool compounds in this series have shown active against multi drug resistant strains (MDR-TB) in the lab and have also demonstrated promising activity in animal models of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
- Whole-cell hits – compounds that have been shown to be active against TB in High Throughput Screening but whose mode of action is unknown. The project will aim to understand this activity.
The €10m project is part of the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7), led and partly funded by the European Union, which is providing €5.4M. The 11 Orchid partners will provide the remainder of the funds.
