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News
CritiTech Inc. awarded NIH grant
for new cancer drug
August 04, 2004
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
LAWRENCE, Kan. – CritiTech announced today that it had
received a $100,000.00 National Cancer Institute STTR grant
from the National Institutes of Health in support of its intraperitoneal
nanoparticulate paclitaxel drug, Nanotax®, which is used
to treat ovarian cancer.
The company, in cooperation with the University of Kansas
Medical Center has performed preclinical ovarian cancer studies
at KUMC under the direction of Katherine Roby, a research
associate professor in the Department of Anatomy and Cell
Biology and a member of The Kansas Masonic Cancer Research
Institute and the Center for Reproductive Sciences at KUMC.
“The NIH grant to CritiTech demonstrates perfectly how
universities, entrepreneurs and the federal government are
joining together to make sure that drugs with life-saving
potential get to the marketplace,” said University of
Kansas Chancellor Robert Hemenway. “KU is very proud
to be associated with CritiTech and with principled entrepreneurs
like Sam Campbell.”
CritiTech’s nanoparticles of paclitaxel are produced
by a patented supercritical fluid process that was originally
invented by a group of researchers led by Bala Subramaniam
in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at
the KU School of Engineering and then applied to the area
of pharmaceutical drug delivery and drug development at the
KU Higuchi Biosciences Center.
The collaborative efforts by Subramaniam and fellow KU faculty
members Roger Rajewski, Valentino Stella, John Haslam, Fenghui
Niu and Charles Decedue to develop applications of this technology
for the pharmaceutical industry have resulted in numerous
breakthroughs in small particle pharmaceutical formation,
collection and coating.
“The results of these early studies are very encouraging
and the research will move forward aggressively as a result
of this grant,” said CritiTech CEO and president Sam
Campbell.
The NIH-funded study will assess the effects of nanoparticulate
paclitaxel, Nanotax®, on the progression of ovarian cancer. Preliminary
data indicates that intraperitoneal (IP) delivery of a simple
suspension of Nanotax® in phosphate buffered saline substantially
prolonged the survival times of mice implanted with ovarian
cancer cells compared to conventional vehicle and Taxol®
controls.
The current study will further compare the effect of IP Nanotax®
vs Taxol® delivery in mice that have been surgically debulked
to more closely resemble the human clinical treatment modality. In
addition, the study will include an examination of the tissue
distribution of IP Nanotax® and IP Taxol®. In
particular, ascites fluid, blood, peritoneal immune cells
and peritoneal tumor cells will be assayed for paclitaxel
levels over time. It is hoped that the knowledge gained
from these studies will allow a better understanding of the
mechanism of increased survival times through IP nanoparticulate
drug delivery. This study will assess the potential of
Nanotax® delivered intraperitoneally as a means to improve
on the current treatment for women with ovarian cancer.
CritiTech provides critical drug delivery and development
technology for the pharmaceutical industry. CritiTech
produces fine-particle pharmaceuticals including nanoparticle
pharmaceuticals using patented technologies developed at KU.
The processes use compressed carbon dioxide as the processing
medium to produce relatively residue-free and uniform drug
microparticles and coatings.
The pharmaceutical industry has exhibited substantial interest
in processes that produce improved formulations using nanoparticulate
drugs in order to extend the patent life of an existing drug
or to enable the delivery of a poorly soluble compound. CritiTech
has also successfully used its proprietary technology to coat
medicinal agents either on small particle drugs for improved
drug delivery or as a thin film on implantable medical devices
such as cardiac stents. The Nanotax® ovarian cancer
drug is the first drug to be announced under the company’s
drug development program.
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