PR Newswire
Industry experts reveal how Vesselon's drug platform offers a new paradigm for extending patents and improving efficacy.
GREENWICH, Conn. , Sept. 7, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- In a digital town hall discussion held with industry analysts, Vesselon CEO and Co-founder Clay Larsen delivered a glimpse into the future of drug development that could revolutionize the pharmaceutical industry. The event, moderated by Endpoints News, showcased how Vesselon's drug platform can extend patents and rapidly create an endless stream of proprietary drugs. The company's bold strategy could yield multiple billion-dollar drug co-formulations by 2030 and redefine the boundaries of drug patents. Sharing the virtual stage with Larsen were EPISTAT CEO Llew Keltner MD, PhD and iECURE Inc. CEO Joe Truitt ,
The three experts explained how Vesselon's drug platform boosts the effectiveness of treatments by making tissues and tumors more receptive to drugs. This is achieved by combining FDA-approved lipid microspheres and self-assembling liposomes with approved drugs during administration, improving drug distribution at the target. They use existing ultrasound machines readily available at hospitals and cancer centers to trigger various biophysical actions that prime cells to receive the drug. This is done by directing standard diagnostic ultrasound at the diseased tissue during infusion treatment.
Vesselon's Four Step Process
Vesselon's lipid microspheres have unique characteristics that are fundamentally advantageous for this cutting-edge application of tissue modulation. Larsen outlined the drug platform's 4 step process to the audience as follows.
- Imagent® is mixed on-site in just five minutes prior to patient administration along with the therapeutic drug it will be used with.
- The co-formulation consists of a drug encapsulated in 10 billion gas microspheres. It simultaneously creates 50 trillion drug encapsulated self-assembling liposomes in the vial and includes free unencapsulated drug. This co-formulation is called TriForm™ because the co-formulated drug is not changed in any way - it maintains its same molecular mechanism of action.
- Then Vesselon uses commercially available ultrasound at cleared FDA levels pointed at the tissue of interest for less than 10 minutes.
- This interaction with the microspheres creates new biophysically initiated modes of action at the cellular level. This is based upon the safe cavitation of the microspheres within the vasculature of the intended target. One of these modes of action has been referred to as sonoporation, where nanoscale pores are opened temporarily in the endothelial wall to allow more drugs to enter the target tissue.
"Our technology not only significantly improves a drug's bioavailability by multiple fold, but perhaps more importantly, the co-formulations create a new patentable entity for each drug, again, without needing to alter it in any way," Larsen said. "Our approach is based upon our Imagent® lipid microsphere, which is FDA approved for contrast ultrasound."
Creating New Chemical Entities
This is the real value proposition for Vesselon's drug platform; it allows pharmaceutical companies to create a new chemical entity that creates new IP, which could extend a drug life cycle for many years under a patent-protected environment—without having to change the active ingredient's manufacturing, packaging, or distribution. Truitt explained, "Unlike improvements to formulation that we often see where you maybe take a one-month injectable and maybe make it three months or six months, where you're not really changing the outcome or the efficacy, in this case, the promise of having a potential better efficacy along with the new chemical entity designation and patent is just really an attractive situation for any franchise."
When asked what makes Vesselon an attractive candidate for acquisition, Truitt said that when an acquisition happens, whether it's analysts that are doing the work or bankers or strategic partners, "...there's always a terminal date which is the end of your IP in the financial model. Vesselon's drug platform is extending that terminal date to the new IP, in the new chemical entity. You're talking about a massive value inflection just on that fact alone. But what's also very interesting here is you get a terminal patent expiration, but you could extend that extremely important in any acquisition."
As IP diligence is always exhaustive, the fact that Vesselon's drug platform is already well established means an acquiring company is not taking on the CMC risk that they would in a new program.
Platform Flexibility
Speaking to the flexibility of Vesselon's drug platform, Keltner said: "In terms of where the platform can be used in tissue, if you can image it with ultrasound, you can treat it. That literally is the limit because Vesselon is using diagnostic ultrasound from a normal diagnostic ultrasound machine at FDA approved frequencies. Additionally, Vesselon's microspheres are in fact FDA approved. They've been used in many, many thousands of patients for imaging at very, very high doses and concentrations. There is a very large safety data package on the microspheres themselves."
Vesselon's solution modulates the tumor microenvironment with biophysics using a combination of gas microspheres and ultrasound to introduce new cellular-level biophysical modes of action to work in concert with the molecular mechanism of action of a selected active drug. This effect can be limited to the target by aiming the ultrasound transducer and beam only at the tumor area to ensure total tumor coverage as well as treatment to the immediate periphery of tissue.
For a comprehensive look at Vesselon's town hall event, including additional insights from industry experts and audience Q&A, visit www.Vesselon.com/townhall . Discover how Vesselon is shaping the future of drug development.
About Vesselon Inc.
Vesselon, Inc. is pioneering the development of patentable drug co-formulations using FDA-approved biophysically activated lipid microspheres and self-assembling liposomes. Their innovations promise to make targeted tissues more receptive to therapeutic drugs, ushering in a new era of unprecedented efficacy in medicine.
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SOURCE Vesselon, Inc.
