Sep 2 2015
Taiwan's GNT Biotech & Medicals Corporation (GNTbm) held a press conference in Taipei on August 25th to update developments in its new Vaucarrin™ platform, a targeted drug delivery technology that uses nano-scale gold as the delivery vehicle.
This event was part of a joint press conference held by its parent company
Gold NanoTech Inc. (GNT), showcasing GNT's latest edible gold-based food and beverage partners, together with another GNT spinoff GNT Biotech & Medical Device Corp (GNTbmd), developing medical devices and cosmetics.
Vaucarrin™ advantages
By directing the drug to the disease site, a Vaucarrin™ drug-carrier-targeting molecule complex can improve a drug's pharmacokinetics, increase its half-life, enhance its therapeutic effect and decrease its adverse effect. Besides improving existing drugs, Vaucarrin™ can also be used to repurpose drug candidates which have been shelved due to the less-favorable targeting and pharmacokinetic profile.
The complex made up of nanogold, the therapeutic agent and the targeting antibody molecule is formed through conjugation with a PH-sensitive proprietary linker developed by GNTbm which controls the release of the drug inside a diseased cell, making it a powerful delivery system with exciting possibilities. GNTbm has developed a library of linker molecules for different therapeutic applications.
Compared to other nano-scale targeted drug delivery technologies in use today, GNTbm nanogold as the delivery vehicle has certain advantages. These include superior biocompatibility, increased drug payload capacity, reduced drug resistance, and great flexibility to the varieties of drugs and ligands that can be utilized in the complex. The complex is small enough to pass the blood brain barrier, and also has potential to be used in oral dosage form, adding exciting possibilities to its potential application. GNTbm intends to focus initially on applications in cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, and neurodegenerative diseases.
"Gold is inert, so it's very safe; GNT's gold flake products have been approved as a food additive by the Taiwan FDA as well as European Regulation of Food Additives E175, and we expect our nanogold to share the same safety profile," elaborated Dr. Alex Chen, President of GNTbm. "The nanogold particle is sized between 20-100 nanometers and can carry a drug payload up to 16 percent of its weight, compared to only 10-12 percent for other nanomedicines," added Chen.
Vaucarrin™ business model
Concerns over toxicity or adverse effects observed in early stage trials are among the major reasons for a new drug's development to be shelved or discontinued completely. Repurposing of such shelved assets is a sought-after alternative for pharmaceutical companies, which may have made significant but unrealized investments in such drugs. With Vaucarrin™, GNTbm intends to provide collaboration opportunities for drug repurposing to the pharmaceutical industry, whereby companies' drugs, whether small or large molecules, protein drugs, siRNA and DNA, etc., all can be repositioned as complexes with greater targeting efficiency, longer half-life, and lower toxicity or adverse effects.
Already the Vaucarrin™ platform is generating significant interest from the international pharmaceutical community.
"During the recent BioTaiwan 2015 exhibition, we signed confidentiality agreements with several major overseas pharmaceutical companies who wanted to learn more about Vaucarrin™," said Dr. Yesu Chao, Vice President of GNTbm.
GNTbm will offer a range of cooperation models to the pharmaceutical industry, including synthesis of nanogold plus linker complexes; tailored nanogold, linker plus therapeutic agent complex formulation; and non-exclusive and exclusive licensing of its platform for external use by pharmaceutical company partners.
Currently GNTbm is working on two projects using the Vaucarrin™ platform; Gbm12401 for breast cancer and Gbm12407 for rheumatoid arthritis.
The development of the Vaucarrin™ platform has been rapid. Work on this technology -- developed entirely in-house -- only began in July 2014, about one year after GNTbm was formed. Currently undergoing PK/PD studies, GNTbm is confident enough in the safety and purity of its nanogold product to hold off on precise and comprehensive toxicology studies until next year at the earliest.
GNTbm nanogold production process
GNTbm nanogold is produced by a proprietary Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) process, developed by parent company GNT Inc. 23 years ago. Nanogold, being gold rendered by the PVD process of between 20-100 nanometers in size, is utilized in the Vaucarrin™ platform, whereas the visible much larger-sized gold flake created by the same process is used by GNT and GNTbmd for a wide variety of applications in the food, beverage, medical device and cosmetic industries.
The process for combining the nanogold, therapeutic agent and targeting antibody molecule complex with the PH-sensitive proprietary linker is another proprietary process developed and owned by GNTbm.
Source: http://www.gntbm.com.tw/tw/