Virpax Pharmaceutical Inc. (NASDAQ: VRPX) and Seqens have announced the signing of a commercial supply and manufacturing agreement for MMS019.
Virpax and Seqens enter a manufacturing agreement.
Seqens is an integrated pharmaceutical solutions leaders with 24 manufacturing sites globally and seven R&D facilities across the US and Europe. The company develops and produces customized ingredients and solutions for demanding industries such as cosmetics, healthcare, food, homecare ad electronics.
The deal with Seqens covers both the delivery of material for Virpax’s clinical trials and the long-term commercial supply of MMS019 to the company. In addition, at its facilities in Newburyport and Devens, Massachusetts, Seqens will carry process development and assessment of extra large-scale commercial MMS019 quantities.
CEO and Chairman Anthony Mack said, “Establishing a collaboration with a strong partner capable of supplying clinical and commercial scale quantities of MMS019 is another important advancement in our MMS019 product development strategy. Seqens has a demonstrated expertise in developing and manufacturing highly-complex molecules for large scale production. Importantly, we expect this collaboration to support future development and supply additional Molecular Envelope Technology programs under development, including Envelta™ and PES200, our post-traumatic stress disorder product candidate.”
MMS019 based on nanotechnology
MMS019 is a therapeutic product candidate based on a sort of nanotechnology that allows for the intranasal administration of a metabolically labile peptide medication to the brain. MMS019 is produced with equipment and procedures that are used in the industry (high-pressure spray drying and homogenization). In morphine-tolerant mice, pharmacological evidence of the action of enkephalin facilitated by molecular envelope technology (MET) exists. At the dose administered, the MET nanoparticles are well tolerated through the nasal route. MMS019 showed equivalent preclinical activity to morphine in all mice pain models evaluated without the drug-seeking and tolerance associated with opioids.
Virpax is also using MET to develop the PES200 product candidate for managing post-traumatic stress disorder and the MMS019 in inhibiting viral replication as a result of SARS-CoV-2 or influenza.
