Drug Delivery & Formulation

The Drug Delivery, Reformulation and Repurpose (D2-R2) program uses the 505(b)(2) pathway to develop improved medicines in niche markets where commercial gaps or clinical opportunities exist. Our in-house formulation experts customize the core delivery technologies to satisfy the unmet medical needs. Drug repurposing is another strategy for clinical development of our product candidates either independently or in collaboration with pharma partners to expand our product pipeline.

FOCUS AREA 1: Bone Marrow Drug Delivery

Zymeron developed a peptide-based drug delivery platform that shows rapid and efficient delivery of a broad range of small molecules to the bone marrow. This targeted delivery and stimuli-triggered release technology improved the drug availability by many folds compared to systemic administration e.g. iv injection. The platform is a plug and play system enabling rapid and flexible incorporation of any new molecules; in addition, the release of drug payload to the marrow microenvironment can be regulated to achieve desired drug concentration and duration of effect.

Bone marrow is the primary hematopoietic organ, which is involved in multiple malignant diseases including acute and chronic leukemia, multiple myeloma, myelodysplastic syndromes, and bone metastases from solid tumors. On the other hand, high dose and frequency of chemotherapeutics lead to severe side effects including myelosuppression or myelotoxicity, which is often the dose-limiting factor for cancer treatment.

Zymeron is actively seeking collaborators and joint pharma or biotech partners to expand the bone marrow drug delivery pipeline with new or existing molecules.

Success 1 – Molecularly Targeted Therapy to Treat Myelotoxicity.

Myelotoxicity is a very common treatment-related adverse effect for patients receiving systemic chemotherapy, and patients receiving radiotherapy directed to body regions rich in bone marrow and hematopoiesis activity. Myelotoxicity is the most common dose-limiting toxicity in cancer treatment with cytotoxic agents, and often leads to dose reduction, dose delay or discontinuation of treatment, limiting the therapeutic effect.

Zymeron develops prophylactic drug for the prevention of radiotherapy-induced myelosuppression, chemotherapy-induced myelosuppression, and hematopoietic acute radiation syndrome (ARS). The drug provides broad spectrum protection for multi-lineages of the hematopoietic stem cells to prevent neutropenia, anemia and thrombocytopenia. Radiation-induced myelosuppression and chemotherapy-induced myelosuppression represent multi-billion dollar markets; however current healthcare solutions are for post-treatment management and there is no cancer-agnostic preventive medicine that protects the hematopoietic stem cells from chemo or radio-toxicity and maximizes cancer treatment efficiency and eliminates or reduces their toxicity to bone marrow.

Focus Area 2: Reformulate Insoluble Drug to Injectables

Zymeron develops injectable drug formulations by converting insoluble or poorly soluble small molecule drugs to highly soluble non-covalent variants. The final formulation can be ready-to-inject solutions or lyophilized powders.

PARP inhibitors are pharmacological inhibitors of poly ADP ribose polymerase (PARP). PARP inhibitors are insoluble molecules and are approved as oral cancer therapy. Zymeron reformulate and repurpose PARP inhibitors for life-threatening emergency conditions.

Focus Area 3: Dual Biologic-Small Molecule Delivery System

Zymeron develops a revolutionary extracellular vesicle technology simultaneously delivering two therapeutic modalities – biologics (e.g. enzyme) and small molecules, for improved management of hard-to-treat chronic diseases and conditions.

Our WoundEV therapeutics include biofilm management, bacteria and fungi inhibition, and wound healing promotion. As part of the WoundEV program, we also develop together with our partners: