PIttsburgh, PA (PRWEB) June 06, 2013
Qrono Inc., these days announced that the National Institute of Basic Healthcare Sciences (NIGMS), National Institutes of Wellness (NIH), awarded Qrono a Tiny Company Technologies Transfer (STTR) Phase I grant for $ 256,000 to boost the therapy alternatives for wet age-connected macular degeneration (wet AMD) and fund additional development of the companys predictive modeling technology for the design of extended-acting injectable (LAI) drug formulations. The investigation will be conducted in collaboration with The Tiny Lab at the Swanson College of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh.

Wet AMD is a top cause of vision loss amongst older adults and can progress quite speedily due to abnormal blood vessel growth behind the retina. Ranibizumab and bevacizumab are two drugs that target the proteins that result in this abnormal growth. However, simply because therapies with these drugs call for a month-to-month eye injection, patient non-adherence (up to 67%) is a main issue. Qronos new LAI formulation for these drugs will lessen the injection frequency to when each and every 3 months or even six months which must boost patient adherence and thereby allow greater patient outcomes.

We are grateful that the grant reviewers recognized the potential of our technologies, mentioned Larry Zana, Qrono CEO & Co-Founder, and we appreciate the help of NIGMS for this investigation. The grant will also enable Qrono to demonstrate that its predictive modeling technology, referred to as QronoMetricsTM, can be utilised to generate LAI formulations for a wide variety of target pharmaceuticals in an unprecedented, fast period of time. In Phase I, Qrono will develop LAI formulations for ranibizumab, bevacizumab, and two other active pharmaceutical ingredients. Upon successful completion of Phase I, Qrono will be eligible to apply for Phase II funding that will extend its predictive models to cover preclinical and clinical pharmacokinetic information.

QronoMetricsTM provides three important advantages in the production of custom controlled-release and microencapsulated systems:
Removes the trial and error needed by conventional style techniques, resulting in faster time-to-marketplace, lowered improvement expense and reduced threat.
Lowered active pharmaceutical ingredient fees, up to 60% less.
Crucial parameters automatically identified for good quality by style (QbD) manufacture
Dr. Steven Small, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, mentioned, This grant will further enable investigation that builds upon our ongoing collaboration with Qrono. It is an exceptional example of how an academic-sector collaboration can enable much better drugs.

About Qrono:

Fully operational given that 2012, Qrono Inc. is a specialty pharmaceutical organization enabling much better medications, stronger patient adherence, improved patient outcomes, and quicker time-to- market place for new medications making use of an revolutionary technologies to generate extended-acting injectable (LAI) formulations. These lengthy-acting drug formulations enable a single administration of active pharmaceutical ingredient to give a therapeutic impact ranging from numerous days to a lot of weeks or months. Our pipeline strategy focuses on LAI controlled release formulations of drugs with recognized security profiles in therapeutic places with either high non-adherence (e.g., antipsychotics and ophthalmology), or exactly where LAIs can add therapeutic worth (e.g., health-related countermeasures and oncology).

About The Tiny Lab:

The Tiny Lab explores synthetic drug delivery approaches that mimic those of cells and tissues in order to enhance (or alternatively endow new) biological functionality. To this end, researchers discover new ways to make complicated presentations of bio-active molecules over time and space. The mission is twofold. Specifically, researchers aim to utilize biomimetic delivery systems to achieve both: 1) enhanced therapeutic efficiency for future drug formulations (e.g. medicine that imitates life) as nicely as 2) understanding of simple biological processes that are otherwise obscured with out engineering tools that can be tuned to replicate multi-modal cellular language.





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