February 23, 2022 (COPENHAGEN, Denmark). Zerion Pharma A/S (“ZERION”) announces today that it has executed a long-term agreement with Arla Foods Ingredients covering the supply of its Lacprodan® BLG-100 for use as a pharmaceutical excipient in connection with ZERION’s patented Dispersome® technology. Arla Foods Ingredients is a global leader in value added whey ingredients. Among others, serving the markets within clinical and early life nutrition.
The two companies announced their intention to enter into a supply agreement in February 2021. Further collaboration between the parties and strong interest from the pharmaceutical industry in applying the Dispersome® technology have now resulted in completion of the supply agreement that secures supply of Lacprodan® BLG-100 to ZERION for a minimum of 10 years.
“The completion of this supply agreement with Arla Foods Ingredients confirms our excellent collaboration that started in 2018 when we identified BLG as a very promising candidate for use in our Dispersome® technology”, says Ole Wiborg, CEO of ZERION, and elaborates:
“Both for ZERION and for our partners in the pharmaceutical industry, it is of critical importance to secure long-term and stable supply of Lacprodan® BLG-100 for pharmaceutical products that will be marketed based on our Dispersome® technology.”
Dispersome® is a leading drug solubility enhancing technology in particular for oral solid dosage forms (such as tablets), resulting in improved bioavailability. ZERION believes that this technology can be applied to the majority of new small molecule drugs in development as well as many marketed drug products that suffer from low solubility and as a result low bioavailability. Low solubility is one of the biggest challenges in drug development and the Dispersome® technology provides an innovative solution. Lacprodan® BLG-100 is a highly purified protein that is used by ZERION as a critical component (excipient) in the Dispersome® technology.
ZERION has established partnerships with several pharmaceutical companies applying the Dispersome® technology to enable clinical development of the partners’ novel drug compounds. In addition, ZERION is pursuing several internal development programs aimed at improving the formulation of existing, marketed drug products.
The company recently announced that it was able to reduce the amount of active drug substance by 75% in a pharmacokinetic study in dogs for its lead program ZN002, while maintaining the same plasma concentration as the originator product. This corresponds to a 4 fold increase in bioavailability. ZN002 is aimed at improving the formulation of a currently marketed cancer drug by obtaining bioequivalence to the originator product but with a substantial reduction in the amount of active drug, and consequently number of tablets per administration. The 4 times increase in bioavailability potentially makes it possible to reduce the number of tablets to be taken by cancer patients by millions of tablets.
ZERION has discovered and developed the Dispersome® technology that greatly enhances the solubility of poorly soluble, oral drugs and improves bioavailability and the therapeutic options for patients. The Dispersome® technology is based on preparing stable amorphous formulations by mixing high loads of the drug compound with Lacprodan® BLG-100. ZERION develops proprietary drug formulations and offers the Dispersome® technology to established pharma and biotech companies as a means to solve their most challenging drug solubility problems. The Dispersome® technology is patent protected and offers in connection with any pharmaceutical drug many additional years of IP protection.
ZERION was established in 2019 as a spinout from the University of Copenhagen based on almost a decade of research. (Dispersome® is a trademark of Zerion Pharma A/S).
For more information, please visit www.zerion.eu or contact:
Ole Wiborg, CEO Mobile: +45 40 96 80 18 E-mail: ow@zerion.eu
