Bedford Massachusetts Drug Delivery Company Integral BioSystems Announces New Zealand Patent Grant On OcuSurf Invention

Specialty drug delivery company Integral BioSystems LLC has won a broad patent allowance by the IPONZ for its platform delivery innovation OcuSurf

Boston-area hybrid CRO/innovation company Integral BioSystems, has won a patent allowance from the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand on one of its flagship inventions, OcuSurf, a novel, patented, differentiated and improved formulation approach for medications to treat disorders of the ocular surface and the anterior chamber of the eye. Products formulated in OcuSurf are highly bioavailable and tissue-permeating, due to its ability to rapidly absorb into tissue. OcuSurf variants for other routes such as oral, dermal, rectal, and urology have been enabled with multiple small-molecule drugs. Due to the high tissue permeation enabled by OcuSurf, this innovation is an excellent 505b2 strategy for drug reformulation, either to bridge the revenue gap for patent-expired products or to offer a path to render insoluble, impermeable drugs bioavailable.

The Details
A substantial number of ophthalmic drug products for disorders of the ocular surface are hydrophobic, or sparingly soluble in water, and formulated as suspensions. This results in less than 5% of each eye-drop actually being absorbed by the target tissue. Such formulations typically contain a high concentration of drug to achieve a therapeutic effect. OcuSurf™ nanostructured emulsions are formulated into mucosa-penetrating, tissue absorbed nanoparticles, melting at body temperature to release dissolved drug at the requisite tissue site, allowing much less drug to be administered for equivalent or better therapeutic effect.

Integral BioSystems is developing an ophthalmic pipeline utilizing this technology. As a business strategy, Integral invites licensing-based collaborations for other potential applications in ophthalmic, dermal or other routes that can benefit from this technology.