Using the very small to tackle the very large – from concept to clinic

Drug development is expensive and risky. Only one in 5000 molecules make it from concept to the market and the development of a new medicine costs about one billion US dollars. There is a 90% failure rate at the clinical development stage, when drugs are tested in humans. Inadequate efficacy is a major reason for clinical trial failure and low concentrations of drug at the site of disease contribute to poor effectiveness.

Additionally, an estimated half of patients with chronic conditions do not take their medicines as prescribed. A fear of side effects is a major reason for not taking medicines appropriately. Side effects may be minimised if more drug is channelled to the diseased areas of the body and less drug is delivered to healthy tissue. This precision medicine concept is being pursued in our laboratory and clinical studies.

Overcoming the efficacy and side effect issues may be achieved by controlling where drug molecules go in the body.

Using specially designed nanoparticles that are about a thousandth the width of a single human hair, we are able to control to some extent, where the drug molecules end up, when the medicine is administered. As such, we have designed a pain medicine, EnveltaÔ. EnveltaÔ is being developed as a non-addictive pain killer in order to provide a safer pain medicine when compared to opioids. In the US, 80,000 people die from opioid poisoning annually and in the UK, 40 people die every week from opioid poisoning.

We have also designed cancer targeting nanoparticles for the treatment of triple negative breast cancer and other medicines to treat sight threatening illnesses.

Our ocular medicine candidates have been clinically tested and the precision medicine concept proven in humans. We have indeed progressed from concept to clinic.

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