- Lexaria Bioscience is a drug delivery technology developer advancing its IP for transforming existing consumer products and medications that may improve their availability and bioavailability
- The analysis of Lexaria’s DehydraTECH(TM) shows it did not create unwanted new molecular entities during the transformation process, did not inhibit the drugs’ expected antiviral functions and did increase absorption
- The DehydraTECH testing has been in conjunction with drugs used to treat SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19, HIV/AIDS and hepatitis, although the company envisions its technology becoming responsive to a much wider array of viral illnesses
- The company envisions building on its recent successes with larger studies of the DehydraTECH process in animals infected with viruses such as SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 or HIV/AIDS and hopes to eventually form partnerships with established pharmaceutical giants
Oral drug delivery platform innovator Lexaria Bioscience (NASDAQ: LEXX)provided investors an update July 22 on the success of its efforts to advance its proprietary technology toward scalable commercial use for improving the treatment of select viral illnesses.
Lexaria has met three primary objectives in its investigation of antiviral drug conversion process outcomes as the antiviral drugs are processed with Lexaria’s patented DehydraTECH, according to the company’s news release (https://ibn.fm/H4wBZ).
Lexaria aims to make drugs more bioavailable through DehydraTECH conversion without impairing the drugs’ essential functions. Many antiviral drugs currently available experience a decrease in bioavailability when taken orally because of poor intestinal uptake and/or significant liver biotransformation within the patients’ bodies — the company cites the anti-inflammatory drug colchicine, which has a bioavailability of about 45 percent and a narrow margin between what is regarded as safe and toxic dosing.
Lexaria’s three primary objectives in testing DehydraTECH’s processing of colchicine and four other anti-inflammatories — darunavir, ebastine, efavirenz and remdesivir — were to determine if DehydraTECH processing would demonstrate evidence of increasing absorption through oral delivery, evidence that the drug compounds would continue to inhibit viruses as expected in mammalian cells, and evidence that the processing would not lead to the creation of new molecular entities (“NMEs”) requiring new regulatory approvals.
The success achieved during the company’s testing paves the way for larger analysis of the DehydraTECH-processed drugs in vivo in animals infected with SARS-CoV-2/COVD-19, HIV/AIDS or other infectious disease-causing viruses, according to the company, with the ultimate aim of forming partnerships with established pharmaceutical industry drug-makers who may be interested in incorporating DehydraTECH technology with those tested drugs, or other drugs with similar characteristics.
The five drugs being analyzed in conjunction with DehydraTECH processing are representative of protease inhibitors (“PIs”), reverse transcriptase inhibitors (“RTIs”) and a tubulin polymerization and microtubule inhibitor (“TPMI”) used to treat HIV, hepatitis C, hepatitis B, COVID-19 infections and cancers. Lexaria hopes to apply its discoveries to pharmaceuticals that fight other virus-triggered diseases such as shingles, influenza and viral forms of gastroenteritis, hepatitis, meningitis, and pneumonia.
The company’s news release cites statistics noting that 37.7 million people are currently known to be infected with HIV and 36.3 million people have died from HIV/AIDS since the beginning of the epidemic, between 290,000 and 650,000 people die every year from virus-driven seasonal influenza, and over 189 million people have been infected by SARS-CoV-2 in the current global epidemic with more than 4 million of them killed by the illness.
Vaccines have helped reduce the incidence and mortality of these viral illnesses, but effective oral delivery has the potential to increase the availability of medications where vaccines cannot be widely administered. Additionally, in each of the antiviral drug classes currently being tested, the outcomes in animals have demonstrated up to a three-fold increase in bioavailability to the bloodstream over established methods, which may ultimately prove a means of reducing the costs of administration.
“We are looking at repurposing some of these drugs, being able to take an antiviral drug that traditionally could only be administered, for example, by injection. We might be able to apply it in an oral form through a pill,” Lexaria CEO Chris Bunka told Investing News Network in a June report (https://ibn.fm/OTtde). “Our delivery from oral to the bloodstream is as little as two minutes. We’re outrageously fast for oral technology,” Bunka stated.
For more information, visit the company’s website at www.LexariaBioscience.com.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to LEXX are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/LEXX
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