SeraNovo awarded an EIT Health Headstart grant to solve the insoluble

If drugs do not dissolve well, they cannot be absorbed by the person taking them, but with EIT Health Headstart support, SeraNovo is working on an innovation to improve drug solubility.

SeraNovo is developing a technology to solve the problem of poor drug solubility that is prevalent in the pharmaceutical industry. A trend of decreasing solubility has been visible for some time, leading to a large amount of promising medicines never making it to patients. SeraNovo’s technology can solve this problem. With the EIT Health 2019 Headstart grant SeraNovo will solidify their promising in vivo proof of efficacy results, showcasing their liquid formulation technology that can greatly increase the bioavailability of poorly soluble small molecules when orally administered.

The technology is based on new generation solvents, the combination of 2 or more components that form a stable liquid at room temperature. These liquids are highly tunable, making it possible to design them specifically for a certain medication, leading to very high solubility and stability for a specific drug. The grant of EIT Health allows SeraNovo to develop a showcase of one of these drugs and prove the efficacy in an in vivo model, building on previous results that showed a 230% increase in bioavailability relative to the commercial formulation.

Bastiaan Kluft, CSO of SeraNovo says “Building up a showcase for our technology is crucial for both our own understanding of the technology and for our future customers. The interest in our technology so far has vastly exceeded our expectations, with the help of EIT Health we can accelerate our development and rapidly generate this crucial piece of the showcase”. SeraNovo expects to market their technology as a service this year.

This release was first published 7 February 2019 by EIT Health.