The evaporative precipitation aqueous solution (EPAS) system uses nanostructuring to modify pharmaceutical actives, improving their bioavailability by increasing surface area and providing additional physical stability.
Texas-headquartered PharmaForm claims that the EPAS approach, which does not have the milling and grinding steps required by conventional modification techniques, eliminates the risk of contamination and cuts batch crystalinity. As company vice president of business development Michael Crowley commented, such modifications can produce safer more effective drugs.
He explained that: « The benefits of improved patient compliance and clinical profiles, reduced dose variability and a readily scalable process provide companies with a patentable drug delivery technology for their development pipeline. »
Crowley went on to say that EPAS can be applied to a wide variety of dosage forms, including solid oral, liquid, pulmonary and trasdermal drugs, and that it will help drugmakers « capitalize on the full potential of their highly effective yet poorly soluble compounds. »
These thoughts were echoed by vice president of operations Jason Vaughn who said that: »compared to physical methods of micronization, such as wet-milling, EPAS engineered particles demonstrate a very narrow particle size in range, do not aggregate and exhibit improved flow. »
Vaughn added that these characteristics will help drugmakers take a « smoother path towards clinical and commercial manufacturing. »
PharmaForm is targeting developers of new chemical entities (NCEs) as well as those seeking to enhance the bioavailability of existing drug products, potentially extending patent and product life cycle.