DNT, Dow & Starpharma in 3-way dendrimer deal
The Dow Chemical Company and Starpharma Holdings, will provide DNT
and Starpharma with access to dendrimers and nanotechnology for
drug delivery.
Dendrimers are a new class of nanostructures with physical properties that make them ideal vehicles for targeting diseases and delivering drugs to fight them. This new type of nanostructure (particles so small they allow us to build materials literally atom-by-atom) holds promise for real-world applications such as biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.
DNT's current product development areas include protein, antibody, and anti-inflammatory drug delivery technologies for the pharmaceutical industry; small-interfering RNA (siRNA) drug targeting and delivery solutions for the biotech industry.
Under the terms of the agreement Dow will assign its portfolio and associated royalties in the field of dendrimers to DNT in exchange for an equity stake in DNT. Starpharma, which hold a 42 per cent interest in DNT, will make additional cash investments of $1 million (€766 000) in DNT in exchange for exclusive rights to DNT and former Dow property for polyvalent, dendrimer-based pharmaceutical applications
The deal could be seen as a solution to the problem currently tainting big pharma. Increasing amounts of investor money is spent developing drugs with increasingly little return and imprecise delivery vehicles. One clear way to deliver better performance is better delivery of drugs. DNT's dendrimers are aiming to fuse a drug with a 'container' to deliver it precisely to patients.
"The fact that Dow is transferring their intellectual property portfolio in dendrimers to DNT reinforces that DNT, and our strategic partner Starpharma, are well-positioned to develop, market and successfully commercialise these technologies," said Robert Berry, chief executive officer at Dendritic NanoTechnologies.
In January 2004, Starpharma became the first company in the world to initiate human clinical testing of a dendrimer-based pharmaceutical (VivaGel for prevention of HIV) under a US Food and Drug Administration Investigational New Drug application.
Dendrimers is being hailed as the next big thing in drug delivery technology. Its ability to be assembled in many configurations by using attached lengths of single-stranded DNA molecules, which naturally bind to other DNA strands in a highly specific fashion, means that dendrimers can be produced with a high specificity to its intended target.
For example, it is well known that nanoparticle complexes can be specifically targeted to cancer cells and are small enough to enter a diseased cell, either killing it from within or sending out a signal to identify it. But making the particles has been notoriously difficult and time-consuming.
Previous work has shown that high concentrations of dendrimers are toxic - even without their cancer drug cargo - although the mechanism behind this has not been established.
