EPM speaks to Nigel Theobald, CEO of N4 Pharma who discusses the formulation challenges that can occur during drug development and what the company is doing to improve vaccine delivery systems.
Vaccine Delivery
We understand that you are developing a new delivery solution for cancer treatments and vaccines based around a novel silica particle – Nuvec. What are the key delivery challenges that you are able to solve?
Current vaccine delivery systems have a number of less than optimal properties. These include:
- Lipid composition which can result in undesired hepatic extraction, thus losing critical tumour targeting and – if used in long-term treatment – may result in lipid-induced liver injury.
- Viral vectors carry a risk of recombination with endogenous viruses, to give an active infection. Viruses must be produced in mammalian cells, which involves specialised biotechnology facilities with stringent containment and cross-infection procedures. This is costly and carries associated supply and safety risks if any problems occur.
- Polymeric delivery systems being developed have an unknown long-term safety profile and may lack capacity for full length mRNAs and plasmids.
Many current vaccines require an additional adjuvant to be included in the formulation.