Liverpool in tandem with chemicals

Liverpool University is spinning out Tandem Nano, a life sciences company commercialising research that makes previously insoluble chemicals and materials dissolve in water.

Collaborative research at the university’s Department of Molecular and Clinical Pharmacology and Department of Chemistry, led by Andrew Owen and Steven Rannard respectively, could signify a lowering of cost for various medications ranging from HIV treatments to steroids to antibiotics, and even outside the life sciences sector with detergents and cleaning agents.

On top of the cost reduction, the technology would also increase the efficiency of drugs. The increased efficiency stems from the fact that drugs are generally more easily absorbed by the human body when they are soluble. More and more, however, drug candidates are only insignificantly soluble, if at all, resulting in higher doses needing to be administered. Higher doses are not merely less cost effective, but can also result in toxicity.

Tandem’s technology is based on tailored nanoparticles of insoluble materials, and is entering a relatively new market. In July 2014, Uppsala University spun out Disruptive Materials which is set to commercialise Uppsalite, an alkaline earth metal carbonate turning insoluble drugs into soluble ones.

Steven Rannard, professor at Liverpool University, said: “Although the technology has applications in many market areas, our initial focus is pharmaceuticals. As encapsulated in the company name, we aim to exploit our combined expertise to enable improvements across a range of current medicines and facilitate the exploitation of exciting new developments within our research.”