Intract Pharma awarded £1.4m grant to develop antibodies

Drug delivery developer Intract Pharma has been awarded a £1.4 million grant by Innovate UK to develop a scalable manufacturing process for novel oral antibody products.

The company will develop a manufacturing process for its Soteria technology which can then be scaled in a commercially viable manner. Soteria is able to transform painful injectable therapies into safe, oral formulations. In particular, the technology targets the antibody at the site of disease in the gut to improve its therapeutic effect whilst minimising risks of systemic toxicity.

Intract will use the monoclonal antibody, infliximab, as a model biologic for the programme, potentially developing an oral product utilising the knowledge gained during the study. 

The programme will be conducted by a consortium led by Intract, including the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), Pharmidex and Quay Pharma.

Intract’s CEO, Bill Lindsay, said: “Intract has invested significant resource in developing Soteria at laboratory scale – Innovate UK funding is critical at this point to resolve the issues involved in large-scale GMP manufacture of biologic drugs.”

Dr Graeme Cruickshank, CPI director of formulation, said: “We are delighted to be supporting Intract’s work on developing a manufacturing process for antibody products, which has great potential to improve patients’ treatment. Our position within the consortium also allows us to demonstrate the breadth of capabilities we have here at CPI and how we have been able to bring them to bear to offer our support.”