Last year was another busy year for Medherant with a significant milestone reached when it received positive results from the first clinical trials with its TEPI Patch® technology.
The company also received grant funding to develop plans for its own good manufacturing practice (GMP) facility, filed patent applications for new adhesives and expanded its team. Following are some of Medherant’s highlights from 2018.
Progress of the TEPI Patch
Medherant completed two Phase I clinical trials in November with its most advanced TEPI Patch product, the Ibuprofen TEPI Patch.
The novel adhesive was shown to be well tolerated by all subjects in a study of skin irritation and sensitisation, giving the company the confidence to develop the next generation of drug-in-adhesive patches.
As expected, the second study showed that blood levels of ibuprofen were significantly lower after repeated application of the patch compared to a single oral dose. Local application of ibuprofen will provide site-specific pain relief and avoid gastrointestinal irritation, and a lower blood concentration will help minimise side effects.
Medherant has developed plans to extend its small-scale manufacture of TEPI Patches for non-clinical studies to GMP manufacture of patches for clinical trial. The design work was supported by the award of a Medicines Manufacturing Grant from Innovate UK.
Having its own in-house GMP manufacturing capability would make process optimisation more efficient and reduce costs, as well as allowing us to retain our know how.
New team members
Medherant was pleased to welcome James Robson and Lucy Brindle to the Medherant team, who both bring a wealth of experience in the pharmaceutical industry.
James Robson joined the company in July 2018 as chief financial officer (CFO), bringing with him 27 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.
Alongside Medherant, he supports other innovative start-ups and growth companies in the pharmaceutical, healthcare and medtech sectors to develop, fund and execute their financial business plans. He is a chartered management accountant and holds a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Birmingham.
Lucy Brindle worked with Medherant as a freelance clinical project manager before joining the company permanently in December 2018 as head of programme management and clinical development. She has more than 15 years’ clinical research experience, working for pharma, contract research organisations (CRO) and academia. Lucy has worked in all phases of clinical development across a wide range of therapeutic areas and technologies.
Medherant looks forward to continuing this exciting progress in 2019 by advancing the development of a pipeline of TEPI Patch products, one containing an approved cannabinoid (dronabinol) for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, and two patches to treat Alzheimer’s disease, containing memantine and donepezil.