Bio Platforms
NANOPARTICLE ENGINEERING – Lighting the Way to a Patient-Centric Future
Christopher Worrall, PhD, discusses how nanoparticle engineering technologies could help improve compliance and patient outcomes, for both small-molecule and biological drugs, and how nanotechnology can help facilitate a shift toward more patient-centric medicine.
GENE THERAPY – Developing Affordable Point of Care CAR-T Therapies: Expanding Efficacy & Impact
Rimas Orentas, PhD, and Boro Dropulić, PhD, MBA, believe the future belongs to those who will be able to innovate rapidly, maintain regulatory confidence, and drive down costs to make CAR-T cell and other engineered cell therapies available to all who would benefit.
LIVE BIOTHERAPEUTIC PRODUCTS – Not All Microbiome Approaches Are Created Equal
Duncan Peyton says in comparison with other therapeutic classes, such as antibodies or gene therapy, the progress that has been made with LBPs to date has been rapid, and for the field to maintain this rate of progress and to establish LBPs as a mainstay in the treatment of patients across a variety of diseases, a number of key questions need to be addressed.
WHITEPAPER – Key Considerations in Oral Delivery of Peptides – Factors to Consider While Evaluating Oral Administration
Peptide therapeutics are a hot topic in pharmaceutical R&D. While most peptides are administered parenterally, oral delivery of peptide therapeutics offers several advantages. Enteris BioPharma’s…
PLATFORM TECHNOLOGY – Confident Silence: Delivering on the Promise of siRNA Therapies
Giles Campion, MD, says while the liver offers plenty of fertile ground for developing siRNAs therapies to treat many diseases, many disease-related genes are not highly expressed in the liver. For this reason, the next great challenge in the field is delivering siRNA to tissues outside the liver.
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW – BIOVECTRA: mRNA & the Future of Pharma
Marc Sauer, PhD, discusses his new position, growth at BIOVECTRA, and how he believes mRNA technologies can best be leveraged to improve the lives of patients.
BIORESORBABLE POLYMERIC MATRICES – Convergence of Materials Science & Drug Development to Treat Challenging ENT Diseases
Maria Palasis, PhD, and Robert Kern, MD, review how The XTreo platform represents a unique and powerful convergence of materials science, drug development, and formulation chemistry, enabling the local delivery of medication to anatomical spaces not accessible by conventional therapeutic approaches.
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW – Catalent: Developing & Delivering Billions of Doses of Drugs Every Year
Alessandro Maselli, President and Chief Operating Officer of Catalent, talks about his company’s unique approach to drug development partnerships as he prepares to become the company’s new President and Chief Executive Officer on July 1, 2022.
WHITE PAPER – Nanoparticles in Drug Delivery & Photothermal Therapies
Download this white paper to learn more about the applications of silica and metal-based nanoparticles in drug delivery and photothermal therapy…..
GLOBAL REPORT – 2021 Global Drug Delivery & Formulation Report: Part 2, Notable Drug Delivery and Formulation Product Approvals and Technologies of 2021
In part 2 of this 3-part series, PharmaCircle, in collaboration with Drug Development & Delivery, focuses on notable drug delivery and formulation product approvals.
EXCLUSIVE ONLINE CONTENT

Pantherna & Evaxion Announce Promising Preclinical mRNA Vaccine Data
Evaxion Biotech A/S and Pantherna Therapeutics GmbH recently announced preclinical proof of concept for the combination of the two companies’ key….

Nectin Therapeutics to Collaborate With Merck on Clinical Trial of Anti-PVR Antibody in Combination with KEYTRUDA in Patients With Locally Advanced & Metastatic Solid Tumors
Nectin Therapeutics Ltd. recently announced it has entered into a clinical trial collaboration agreement with Merck. Under this collaboration, Nectin will evaluate the safety, tolerability, and antitumor activity of its novel….

Purple Biotech Expands Pipeline of First-in-Class Therapeutics With Acquisition of Immunorizon & Its Portfolio of Tri-Specific Antibodies for the Treatment of Cancer
Purple Biotech Ltd. recently announced it has entered into an agreement for the acquisition of Immunorizon Ltd., a private company developing potential multi-specific T and NK cell engager oncology therapies that….

BioAegis Therapeutics Announces FDA Clearance of IND for its Inflammation Regulator Protein for the Treatment of ARDS
BioAegis Therapeutics, Inc. recently announced the US FDA has approved its Investigational New Drug (IND) application for recombinant plasma gelsolin to proceed for the….

Ocuphire Announces Topline Results From Phase 2 Trial of Oral APX3330 in Diabetic Retinopathy & Plans for End-of-Phase 2 Meeting With FDA
Ocuphire Pharma, Inc. recently announced topline efficacy and safety results from its ZETA-1 Phase 2 trial evaluating oral APX3330 for the treatment of diabetic….
MARKET NEWS & TRENDS
WEBINARS

On-Demand Webinar: How to Safely Handle Your Antibody Drug Conjugate
Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs) have a highly specific mechanism of action which is an advantage for the treatment of several oncology indications…..
WHITE PAPERS

WHITEPAPER – Key Considerations in Oral Delivery of Peptides – Factors to Consider While Evaluating Oral Administration
Peptide therapeutics are a hot topic in pharmaceutical R&D. While most peptides are administered parenterally, oral delivery of peptide therapeutics offers several advantages. Enteris BioPharma’s…

WHITE PAPER – Nanoparticles in Drug Delivery & Photothermal Therapies
Download this white paper to learn more about the applications of silica and metal-based nanoparticles in drug delivery and photothermal therapy…..

WHITE PAPER: Controlled Synthesis of Lipid Nanoparticles Using the Automated Nanoparticle System
Particle Works’ leading microfluidic technology offers a unique automated nanoparticle generation platform for the production of homogeneous, controllable, and reproducible LNPs….

eBOOK: Antibody Production
Antibody production is a multi-step complex process and generating reproducible antibodies is highly critical for immunoassays-based research, immunodiagnostics, and immunotherapy. Antibodies’ reproducibility is driven by…

ProPerma™ Oral Formulation Technology
ProPerma™ uniquely improves both permeability and bioavailability of BCS III and BCS IV compounds by deploying an innovative and bespoke combination of GRAS and novel enhancing excipients…
What are Bio Platforms?
Platforms (or asset-independent technologies to capture all kinds of capabilities that can be leveraged across many different drug candidate assets rather than just discovery tools that the term ‘platform’ immediately brings to mind) are ubiquitous in modern pharma. They are the product of an arms race, to secure access to the best capabilities in key areas.
Platform technologies are considered a valuable tool to improve efficiency and quality in drug product development. The basic idea is that a platform, in combination with a risk-based approach, is the most systematic method to leverage prior knowledge for a given new molecule. Furthermore, such a platform enables a continuous improvement by adding data for every new molecule developed by this approach, increasing the robustness of the platform.
But it has often been said that access to the latest technological platforms to aid efficient drug discovery and development is limited to Big Pharma, which can more easily justify the costs of creating and operating these platforms.
Benefits of Bio Platforms
Platform technologies have the ability to radically improve upon current products and generate completely novel products. In this sense, they open up new arenas for drug discovery and development, potentially increasing the number of therapeutic options for patients. Once a single compound or therapeutic has been generated and demonstrates a clinical benefit in patients, it is more likely this platform technology can successfully be applied to other therapeutic areas, derisking future compounds/products.
Complex drugs by their very nature are challenging and costly to manufacture. This, in turn, translates into higher costs for patients and other payers. In order to provide safe and effective therapies at a reasonable price, it is necessary for the industry to develop manufacturing technologies that reduce costs and provide a consistent product. While the initial investment may be larger, manufacturing costs will be lower over time as the manufacturing process is solidified.
Scale and Investment of Bio Platforms
Despite the initial upfront costs, platform technologies inevitably provide pragmatic solutions to production challenges, while yielding safer and more effective therapeutic products. It has often been said that one of the key features that distinguishes “Big Pharma” from biotech is access to the latest technological platforms to aid efficient drug discovery and development.
These platforms range from vast chemical libraries, ultra-high throughput screening and huge genetic databases in discovery, to predictive toxicology platforms, cutting-edge ‘omics’ and even deep-seated knowledge of particular therapeutic areas in development. All these platforms have two things in common: They can be used on any (or many) development candidate assets, and they cost huge sums to establish in the first place, and in a few cases each time they are used as well. Hence their restriction to the largest pharmaceutical companies (and a few of the so-called “big biotechs” that are, in many ways, indistinguishable from the old-guard pharma).
Only when you have hundreds of active projects can you justify the cost of creating and operating these platforms. Or so the mantra goes. It is access to these platforms that keeps the big companies ahead in the race to discover and develop the best medicines (or at least counterbalance the disadvantages of being large and slow-moving, depending on your point of view). But is that just an assertion? How much evidence is there to support the proposition that the efficiency gains due to these platforms outstrips the cost of creating and maintaining them?
Keeping these technologies “cutting edge” has become so expensive that increasingly we hear pharma companies talking of “pre-competitive” approaches to develop the next generation. A group of companies might develop a platform capability they then share. The principle goal of such initiatives is to access even grander and more expensive tools than individual companies could afford, rather than to dramatically cut costs (although sharing platforms rather than developing the same thing in parallel in each silo should at least keep a lid on rising costs).