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news.Germany-based biopharmaceutical company Antisense Pharma’s portable application system, which allows long-term and outpatient administration of therapeutic substances into brain tissue using the convection enhanced delivery (CED), has been granted patents.
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Patents currently granted cover Europe, the USA, Canada, Japan and India, with more patents in other countries being filed.
The portable system has been developed for the treatment of brain tumor patients using Antisense Pharma’s drug trabedersen.
Trabedersen is a first-in-class gene silencing antisense compound – a phosphorothioate oligodeoxynucleotide – designed to selectively down regulate the production of transforming growth factor-beta 2 (TGF-ß2) at the translational level.
Trabedersen is a targeted multimodal therapy and an immunotherapeutic approach in the oncological field.
Besides in high grade glioma, trabedersen is also being investigated in other aggressive cancers which over-express TGF-ß2.
The infusion system consists of carefully harmonized components: after the catheter has been stereotactically placed in the tumor, the drug is administered via an infusion line using an external, programmable, portable pump.
The implantation of the catheter is a neurosurgical intervention, which is geared to the placement of a shunt for hydrocephalus patients where excessive brain liquid is diverted into the blood circulation.
The brain catheter is inserted through the skin to a port chamber which is usually placed in the chest muscle.
The chamber is then connected to an external infusion line, which in turn is connected to a small, portable infusion pump that can easily be attached to the belt.
Antisense Pharma chief medical officer Hubert Heinrichs said the option of a CED-based treatment using a portable application system over weeks and months could well stimulate the development of urgently required neurotherapeutics.