Aphios
Awarded NCI Contract for Manufacturing and Formulation of
Natural Anticancer Drug for Melanoma Clinical Trials
May
07, 2002
— Aphios Corporation has been awarded Phase II of
a Fast Track SBIR contract entitled “SuperFluids™
Isolation of Natural Anticancer Drugs” from the National
Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH)
to manufacture and formulate a specific “difficult-to-manufacture
and difficult-to-formulate” natural anticancer molecule
for clinical trials against melanoma. This Fast Track SBIR
contract is entirely financed by Federal funds ($850,000).
SuperFluids™
are near-critical, critical or supercritical fluids with
or without polar co-solvents. These fluids are normally
gases, such as carbon dioxide, which when compressed, exhibit
enhanced thermodynamic properties of penetration, solvation
and expansion. Aphios has developed and patented SuperFluids™
technologies for the manufacturing as well as nanosomal
formulation of hydrophobic anticancer drugs such as paclitaxel
(the active ingredient in Taxol®), bryostatin 1, and
camptothecin.
Aphios
Corporation (www.aphios.com) is a biopharmaceutical company
that is developing enhanced natural therapeutics for health
maintenance and the treatment of human diseases with a focus
on infectious diseases and oncology. The Company has developed
several enabling SuperFluids™ technology platforms
for improving the discovery, manufacturing, delivery and
safety of therapeutic drugs, and has several enhanced therapeutic
drugs in development. Aphios’ product pipeline includes
small pharmaceutically active molecules from medicinal plants
and marine organisms, and large protein macromolecules that
are crucial to the functioning of the human genome.
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Taxol® is
a registered trademark of the Bristol-Myers Squibb Company
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