The latest agreement will see OctoPlus manufacturer clinical supplies of Nanocort (prednisone), a formulation of the widely-used steroid drug in which the active ingredient is encased in lipid droplet called a liposome.
OctoPlus’ has been best known to date as a developer of candidate drug and vaccine products, usually partnered with other companies and based on its drug delivery technologies.
The firm also operates a contract formulation development and clinical trial material manufacturing business, however, and this has unit increased dramatically as a proportion of total revenues in the last year or so.
In the first half of 2008, OctoPlus had gross revenues of a little under €6m, almost entirely from contract development business which rose 28 per cent to €5.8m. The company is scheduled to publish its full-year 2008 results on February 27.
Nanocort is a relatively complex product to manufacture, with the steroid encased within a lipid bilayer.
OctoPlus has positioned itself as a provider of this type of challenging, difficult-to-formulate product, and said in a statement it had “progressed the scale-up and robustness of the production process of this complex liposomal product.”
Encapsulating the product in the lipid is thought to help it to selectively accumulate in inflamed tissues and tumours after intravenous injection. Galapagos is gearing up to start a Phase II trial of Nanocort in rheumatoid arthritis with a view to filing for approval of the product in 2012.
Galapagos licensed Nanocort from another Dutch company – Enceladus Pharmaceuticals – in April 2008. The clinical development of the product will be carried out with the help of Dutch contract research organisation (CRO) Clinquest.