Vivtex Enters Research Collaboration With Astellas Pharma
Vivtex Corporation recently announced it has entered a research collaboration with Astellas Pharma Inc., a global pharmaceutical company. The collaboration is focused on the evaluation of Vivtex’s unique and proprietary GI-ORIS (Gut on a chip and AI) screening and formulation platform technology to support the development of novel, oral versions of a therapeutic candidate provided by Astellas.
Maureen Deehan, CEO of Vivtex, said “We are delighted to enter this new collaboration with Astellas Pharma. Over the past few years, Vivtex has worked productively with multiple leading pharma and biotech companies to apply its GI-ORIS platform to the challenge of improving drug oral bioavailability and thereby creating valuable new product opportunities and potential benefits to patients.”
Vivtex scientists demonstrated the ability and potential of the GI-ORIS platform to expedite the development of new orally available biologic drugs in a 2020 study published in Nature Biomedical Engineering. The study showed how GI-ORIS can be applied to accurately model (with near-perfect predictability) the absorption of drug molecules in the small intestine, enabling Vivtex to develop novel oral formulations and delivery methodologies, previously not possible for biologic medicines based on the limitations of available technologies. Vivtex has secured a worldwide, exclusive license from MIT for this foundational technology and its applications for the development of novel oral biologic therapies.
Vivtex was launched as a spin out from the labs of Robert Langer (MIT) and Giovanni Traverso (MIT, Harvard University). The company is focused on transforming the market for biologic therapies through the development of novel oral biologics including enhanced, oral versions of existing high-value biologic candidates that can only be administered by injection or infusion.
To achieve its mission, Vivtex is leveraging its proprietary and extensively validated high-throughput GI-ORIS (Gut on a chip and AI) screening and formulation platform (Nat. Biomed. Eng. 4, 544–559: 2020) through strategic co-development partnerships and R&D collaborations with biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. For more information, visit www.vivtex.com.
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