The firm has developed the Accordion Pill, an advanced oral drug delivery system that is claimed to improve the bioavailability of drugs by increasing the amount of time the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) are held in the gastrointestinal system.
By improving bioavailability, the Accordion Pill has the potential to transform drugs that need to be taken as much as five times a day into one-a-day pills that improve patient compliance and reduce unwanted side effects, said the firm.
Intec Pharma plans to launch a series of supergeneric drugs using the Accordion Pill technology and has now signed a deal with film-based drug specialist manufacturer BioEnvelop Agro of Quebec, Canada and Tapemark of Minnesota, USA, a privately-held contract manufacturer, in order to achieve this.
"The signing of these agreements means that we can move ahead immediately with laying the groundwork for the mass production of our pipeline products," said Efi Cohen-Arazi, CEO of Intec.
"Tapemark is a world leader in large-scale pharmaceutical production. Together with BioEnvelop they have the expertise, know-how and infrastructure required to get our products quickly to market."
According to Intec, supergeneric drugs combine the advantages of originalpharmaceutical products - which have the potential for blockbuster sales as well as patent protection - with the advantages of generic drugs which can get quick regulatory approval.
"We plan to use our platform Accordion Pill technology to transform numerous existing drugs into more powerful therapies," said Cohen-Arazi.
"This technology offers a new competitive edge in the area of oral drug development and for product life cycle management."