Rexahn Pharmaceuticals awarded patent in Japan for novel drug delivery platform
CPMA drug delivery platform technology developed by the company enables more precise, targeted delivery of anticancer drugs directly into cancer cells
Rexahn Pharmaceuticals, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing best-in-class therapeutics for the treatment of cancer, has been issued a patent (No. 5749273) from the Japanese Patent Office entitled ‘Polymeric Systems for the Delivery of Anticancer Drugs’ for its novel carboxypropyl methacrylamide (CPMA) drug delivery platform.
The CPMA drug delivery platform technology developed by the company enables more precise, targeted delivery of anticancer drugs directly into cancer cells. The versatile chemical properties of CPMA allow it to be covalently linked to a diverse range of anticancer compounds together with a signalling moiety directing it to cancer cells and bypassing healthy tissues. Once inside a cancer cell, the covalent linker is metabolised yielding the free anticancer compound.
CPMA has the flexibility to covalently bind multiple anticancer compounds into a single formulation. Because it is highly water soluble, CPMA also enables compounds that are water insoluble to be more effectively delivered and bioavailable.
‘There is a significant unmet need in the oncology field for drugs that selectively target and kill cancer cells while sparing normal, healthy cells. By utilising our proprietary CPMA polymer drug delivery technology and combining it with currently approved anticancer drugs, we hope to transport anticancer drugs directly into cancerous cells where their cytotoxic activity can be most effective, thereby increasing efficacy and minimising the harmful side-effects associated with traditional cancer therapy,’ said Dr Peter Suzdak, CEO of Rexahn.
Rexahn has also developed proprietary drug discovery platform technologies in the areas of Nano-Polymer-Drug Conjugate Systems (NPDCS) and 3D-GOLD (computational predictive modelling), and TIMES (small molecule signalling discovery).
