“Grant to significantly advance Arecor’s proprietary co-formulation platform in the development of diabetes therapies that meet critical patient unmet needs”.

Arecor Ltd (“the Company”), a leader in developing superior biopharmaceuticals through the application of its proprietary and innovative formulation technology platform, ArestatTM , is pleased to announce that the Company, in collaboration with the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (“MIB”), has been awarded a £0.97 million grant from Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, to advance the Company's high throughput biopharmaceutical co-formulation platform. (*The £0.97 million grant from Innovate UK equates to US$1.3 million based on exchange rates on Friday, 15th June 2018)

Through the application of the Arestat™ platform, next generation robotics and ultra-high speed analytics, the development of sophisticated combinations of two or more existing therapeutic products for diabetes treatment, in a single liquid ready-to-use format, can be enabled. These co-formulations have the potential to significantly improve patient convenience and compliance, leading to better health outcomes and quality of life.

Next generation ready-to-use co-formulations of biotherapeutics:
There is a critical patient unmet need to develop advanced therapies that combine two or more therapeutic products in a ready-to-use single injection dose, particularly in the treatment of diabetes. Such co-formulations have a great potential to improve patient compliance and convenience leading to improved health outcomes and quality of life.

However, it is often impossible to develop these co-formulations through conventional formulation approaches, due to the incompatibility of compounds that have different properties, which therefore require different environments in order to be active and stable. Arecor has developed and commercialised a highly innovative formulation technology platform, Arestat™, upon which it is now leveraging to address these significant challenges, in partnership with MIB. The purpose of the collaboration is to adapt the technology specifically to co-formulate and assess issues such as drg-to-drug interactions, in-vivo bioequivalence, stabilisation under non-optimal conditions, device compatibility and toxicological safety.

A validated state-of-the-art robotic liquid handling facility and a multivariate design approach will be employed, in combination with high throughput analytics. Whilst the primary objective is to adapt and validate an innovative formulation platform, the study will also lead to the development of highly valuable co-formulation products for diabetes treatment.

The approach has been put to the test on a number of product molecules that Arecor is developing in the field of diabetes and by bringing these molecules into the clinic proves the viability of the technology. The concept is also applicable and well demonstrated across other biological products that span a number of therapy areas.

Alan Dickson, at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, commented: “Working with Arecor reflects the multi-disciplinary collaborative ethos upon which MIB was founded. This is a very exciting collaboration for us - one in which the power of our robotics platform opens up great potential for the rapid development of novel therapeutic approaches”.

Sarah Howell, CEO at Arecor, commented: "We are delighted to receive this prestigious award from Innovate UK which will support an acceleration in the further development of Arecor’s proprietary co-formulation technology platform. We are excited about the potential of this innovative platform technology. It allows us to develop new improved treatment options for patients living with debilitating and often life-threatening diseases, by combining multiple therapeutic products within one ready-to-use therapy that would otherwise not be feasible. This meets our aim of leveraging upon the ArestatTM technology to improve the health outcomes and quality of life of patients.“