Exopharm: Delivering Transformative Medicines
Exopharm (ASX:EX1) is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company at the forefront of transformative medicines using exosomes or extracellular vesicles (EVs) and is pursuing a pipeline-driven platform strategy.
Exosomes can be loaded with a variety of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and can be targeted to selected cell-types and tissue types – improving the safety-profile of the APIs and providing better treatments.
Exosome delivery of DNA and other gene therapies into the nucleus of the patient’s cells will improve treatment of inherited medical conditions.
Exosomes are an alternative means of drug delivery inside the body, alongside technologies such as lipid nanoparticles (LNP), cell-penetrating peptides, viral vectors and liposomes. The drug delivery industry is growing at an annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5% and is currently valued at about US$175 billion.
Exopharm’s exosome technologies solve important needs for the success of exosome medicines – LEAP manufacturing technology, LOAD API loading technologies and EVPS tropism technologies.
Exopharm’s suite of exosome technologies enable its own pipeline of exosome medicines – each aimed at delivering a transformative medicine for an unmet medical need.
Exopharm’s products and technologies are also available under licenses or partnerships to enable others to build their pipelines around the benefits of exosome medicines.
Exopharm’s History
Exopharm was founded in 2013 by Dr Ian Dixon to bring EVs forward as a new form of medicine to treat medical problems people still face.
With experience in the stem cell and cell therapy fields, Dr Dixon was seeing the emerging research around EVs and the potential to use EVs from stem cells as an alternative to cellular therapies. While stem cells cultured in a bioreactor produce large numbers of EVs, the EV purification techniques being used at the time were accepted as being unsuited to the manufacture of a proprietary pharmaceutical-grade biologic product. Dr Dixon realised that the invention of a proprietary technology that could properly and efficiently purify EVs from the other substances in the secretions of the cells would provide a significant commercial opportunity – despite the obvious challenges.
3 years of research by Dr Dixon and his team led to the discovery of a way to isolate EVs using ligand-based affinity chromatography – he called it the LEAP Technology. A PCT Application for the LEAP Technology was lodged in December 2016 and further patent applications have since been lodged. The main patent is now at National Phase in 13 countries including the USA.
In 2018 Exopharm became a listed company on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX). In 2019 Exopharm ran its first clinical trial and its second clinical trial is due to report in early CY 2021.
Since its formation, Exopharm has grown to be a 41-person team based at the Baker Institute in Melbourne as a commercial tenant. Ian remains the Chief Executive Officer of Exopharm and a substantial shareholder.