Evonik Wins Pharma Award for Polymer-Based Technology for mRNA Delivery

Evonik Health Care has won the prestigious CPHI Excellence in Pharma Award in the category Packaging and Drug Delivery. The winning innovation is a new polymer-based drug delivery system for mRNA and other nucleic acids – developed together with researchers at Stanford University.

This award is the latest highlight for Evonik’s mRNA and nucleic acid delivery business. Earlier this year, the company announced a joint investment with the US Government of $220 million to build one of the world’s largest lipid production plants at its site in Tippecanoe, Indiana. A new plant to produce customized lipids at Evonik’s Hanau site is also scheduled to come on stream as early as the beginning of 2023.

“Winning the CPHI award honors our continued commitment and investment in technologies that enable the delivery of mRNA and nucleic acids. We are delighted to provide pharmaceutical companies with the tools they need to create next-generation therapies,” said Thomas Riermeier, head of the Health Care business line at Evonik.

Developed together with Professors Robert Waymouth, Paul Wender and Ronald Levy from the University of Stanford in the US, the prize-winning polymer-based platform complements Evonik’s existing portfolio of lipid-based drug delivery technologies, including lipid nanoparticles (LNPs).

“Our novel delivery platform has great potential for more efficacious delivery, broadening the number of tissues and organs that the payload can be delivered to. We are looking forward to developing this technology further together with our customers,” said Stefan Randl, Head of Drug Substance in the Health Care business line at Evonik.

For the past 2 years, the Health Care business line, as part of Evonik’s life sciences division, Nutrition & Care, has been significantly expanding its existing business in nucleic acid therapies. By supporting customers as an innovation partner along the entire value chain, the Health Care business is shifting the division’s focus toward customer-centric System Solutions. These multi-component offerings across products, technologies and services are tailored to a unique customer need. System Solutions play a key role in the Nutrition & Care Vision for 2032: Life at heart, systems in mind, partners at hand.

Evonik’s Health Care business line is one of the world’s leading contract manufacturers in the industry, offering a fully integrated portfolio of products, technologies and services that support pharmaceutical companies from early development through to commercial manufacture of a drug, including RNA drug delivery technologies. Evonik recognized the potential of gene-based therapeutic approaches early in the emergence of these advances and has built up formulation capacity at its site near Vancouver in Canada and a facility for the commercial production and sterile filling of parenteral drugs in Birmingham, Alabama in the U.S.

The annual CPHI Excellence in Pharma Awards were established in 2004 to celebrate cross-industry innovators driving the industry forward. In 2022, there were more than 180 entries in 10 categories. The award was presented at the CPHI pharmaceutical trade show in Frankfurt on November 1, 2022. For more information, visit  www.evonik.com/mrna.