Australian regenerative medicine specialist Exopharm Limited (ASX:EX1) is now developing EEV exosome medicines to include potential applications for cancer, rare disease, infectious diseases and neurological conditions.
Dr Ian Dixon, Managing Director of Exopharm, said the company now holds a portfolio of exclusive worldwide intellectual property (IP) rights for the design and manufacture of a pipeline of EEV products.
This IP now includes:
- LEAP, wholly-owned IP covering the proprietary isolation and purification of all EVs;
- LOAD, IP for the insertion of custom-designed nucleic acids, such as messenger RNA (mRNA), interfering RNA (RNAi), microRNA (miRNA) and silencing RNA (siRNA) – into EVs in-licensed from the State University of New York at Buffalo USA; and
- EVPS, IP for the attachment of custom proteins to the surface of EVs to enable targeting of EVs to selected cell types, in-licensed from Santa Clara University USA.
LEAP, LOAD and EVPS IP are a powerful set of tools that enable us to design and make a range of important and novel EEV products to treat a number of medical problems,” Dr Dixon said.
“The synergy of these three technologies is harnessed in our new prototype product Fortrexo CoV, for fighting Coronavirus infection by delivering virus-specific RNAi into at-risk cells, arresting virus replication in the cell.”
Exopharm’s EEV products, including Plexodox and Fortrexo CoV, have potential to treat a range of medical conditions with unmet medical needs – including cancer, cardiac disease, rare diseases and conditions (e.g. cystic fibrosis), infectious diseases and neurological conditions.
As released to the ASX on 28 May 2020, Exopharm is utilizing its manufacturing capability and know-how in new EEV product areas to progress into proof-of-concept in vitro testing, then potentially non-clinical and then clinical studies with selected EEV products.
The EVPS IP has been in-licensed from Santa Clara University, USA (www.scu.edu) and the LOAD IP has been in-licensed from the State University of New York at Buffalo, USA (www.buffalo.edu).
Both license agreements include non-material annual commitments to keep each license and associated patents in good standing as well as standard commercial royalties on product sales.
