Atai launches InnarisBio to target drug delivery for mental health

Biopharmaceutical company atai Life Sciences has launched the spin-out organisation InnarisBio in an effort to advance the delivery of medicines for mental health disorders.

InnarisBio was launched in collaboration with the Australian university technology transfer company, UniQuest, and aims to develop a novel sol-gel intranasal drug delivery technology to improve treatments for mental health disorders.

The drug delivery technology was developed in the laboratory of the University of Queensland (UQ) by researcher Dr Harendra Parekh at the School of Pharmacy in the Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences.

The sol-gel technology is designed to deliver pharmaceutical compounds as a liquid at room temperature which becomes a gel at body temperature. So far, the companies state that the platform technology has been successfully demonstrated with both water soluble and insoluble compounds and extracts. 

Traditional drug delivery methods can be problematic in the treatment of central nervous system (CNS) disorders due to the blood–brain barrier that restricts the CNS entry of therapeutic agents, thereby decreasing drug efficacy.

A potential solution is direct, nose-to-brain delivery which could be used as a painless and non-invasive administration route and may offer additional advantages such as increased patient compliance alongside lower dose requirements compared to oral administration.

“InnarisBio is a revolutionary technology company for intranasal drug delivery in the treatment of CNS disorders. Dr Parekh and his team at The University of Queensland have worked diligently to develop a platform technology that may mitigate many of the drawbacks typically associated with traditional drug delivery in the CNS space,” said Florian Brand, CEO and co-founder of atai Life Sciences. “This novel technology has the potential to be superior to other intranasal drug delivery methods available by improving absolute uptake and duration of uptake through muco-adhesion in the nose, reducing dose administered and dosing frequency. We plan to explore the potential use of this technology for a variety of psychedelic and non-psychedelic compounds across atai’s platform.”

“We are excited by the role that UQ’s licensed technology may potentially play in solving one of the world’s most complex health problems,” said Dr. Dean Moss, CEO of UniQuest. “This groundbreaking UQ technology could play a role in helping to tackle the scourge of mental illness; it is an exciting development for the sol-gel technology developed here at UQ, and is another terrific example of the power of UQ research to create meaningful change.”