pSivida Corp. , a leader in the development of sustained release products for treating eye diseases, today announced that pSivida’s president and chief executive officer, Dr. Paul Ashton, will discuss pSivida’s Tethadur™ technology designed to provide sustained delivery of biologics at The World Ophthalmology Conference in Tokyo, April 2-6 and at the SMi Inaugural Conference on Biosimilars and Biobetters USA, in Iselin, New Jersey, April 7-8.
“More than half of the top selling drugs today are biologics. Unfortunately to be effective these drugs must be injected frequently as there is currently no approved technology to deliver most biologics on a sustained basis,” said Dr. Ashton. “We believe our Tethadur technology may provide a solution for sustained-release delivery of many of these molecules. We are pleased with our preclinical in vitro results to date and expect to report data from animal studies by the end of this summer.”
Tethadur utilizes an injectable, bioerodible, nanostructured, porous BioSilicon™ material for drug delivery. The size of the pores in the material is manufactured using nanotechnology to accommodate specific biologic molecules. “Tethadur is not an implant,” Dr. Ashton stated. “Rather, it is suspension of a powdery material and a solution of a biologic drug that is injected into the patient – either in the eye in ophthalmic indications or subcutaneously for other systemic indications—and is designed to deliver the biologic molecules on a sustained basis.”
Dr. Ashton’s presentation before the World Ophthalmology Congress 2014 will be recorded and published following the scientific session. His presentation, “Sustained Delivery of Proteins and Antibodies” will take place on Saturday April 5 from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. (Tokyo time).
On Tuesday, April 8, at 11:30 am ET, Dr. Ashton will present “Biosimilars vs. Biobetters! Determining the Implications for Product Developers in the Pharmaceutical Industry” at the Biosimilars & Biobetters USA conference in New Jersey.