Moderna has tapped Swedish long-acting drug formulation company Nanexa to improve the delivery of up to five injectable therapies.
The heavily back-loaded deal will see Moderna hand over just $3 million upfront, with up to $500 million tied to potential option fees and milestone payments, alongside tiered single-digit royalties on sales if any resulting drugs are approved.
Moderna has spied potential in Nanexa’s PharmaShell platform, which covers drug microparticles in a highly protective, extremely thin film coating of slow-dissolving nontoxic inorganic oxides at the atomic level. The idea is that this enables a high drug load to be delivered to patients in a low injection volume.
Nanexa has already penned collaborations with the likes of AstraZeneca and Novo Nordisk. In August, the Swedish company announced it had signed an agreement with an unnamed Big Pharma to apply its PharmaShell tech to a “specific drug with current yearly sales exceeding $1 billion.”
The deal with Moderna, announced Wednesday evening, will involve assessing the potential of PharmaShell “to enhance the release profile of Moderna’s selected compounds.”
Moderna initially only has a license to use PharmaShell on one undisclosed compound, but the mRNA company has an option to then obtain a license to use the tech on up to four additional compounds once it has conducted preclinical evaluation.
“We are excited to partner with Moderna, a pioneer and leader in the field of mRNA medicines, to explore the potential of our PharmaShell platform and to support the development of improved products for Moderna,” Nanexa CEO David Westberg said in the Dec. 10 release.
“This agreement underscores the versatility of PharmaShell and its potential to address key challenges in the delivery of advanced biologics,” Westberg added.
As well as its Big Pharma collaborations, Nanexa has been working on its own pipeline of formulations led by NEX-22, a sustained-release formulation of diabetes med Victoza. The company was also evaluating new formulations of Bristol Myers Squibb’s myeloma drug Revlimid and its leukemia drug Vidaza, but both programs are labeled as “suspended” on Nanexa’s website.
Moderna, an mRNA specialist known for its COVID-19 vaccine Spikevax, has been turning its focus toward its oncology programs in recent months. In November, the company announced it was winding down development of three clinical mRNA programs, including two investigational vaccines for infectious diseases.