Advent Therapeutics announced that the company has received a $3 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 2B grant from the National Institutes of Health for continued development of the company’s inhaled vitamin A (retinol) palmitate formulation for the prevention of bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) in newborn infants. According to the company, the grant will fund preclinical testing and scale-up activities. Advent, which is also developing an injectable version of its vitamin A formulation that it expects to commercialize as early as 2025, said that both the US and Europe have granted orphan drug designation to its formulation.
The Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation is working with Advent on development of the inhaled formulation, and Lundquist Principal Investigator Virender Rehan said, “I am extremely pleased to be involved in developing Advent’s novel form of inhalable vitamin A therapy. This product has the potential to be a first-in-class therapy capable of non-invasively delivering a safe and effective aerosolized vitamin A dose directly to the neonate’s lung. A lung-targeted inhalation therapy that could effectively reduce development of BPD would have significant clinical, financial, and societal implications by directly addressing co-morbidities suffered by these fragile patients.”
Advent CEO David L. Lopez commented, “This NIH award will allow us to greatly accelerate the development and advance towards approval of our optimized vitamin A drug product. Advent’s novel, precisely optimized products are intended to address the unmet medical need of BPD facing premature infants and reduce morbidity and mortality in this fragile patient population. Our primary focus is to accelerate the path to commercialization, first in the US, then EU and worldwide.”
Read the Advent Therapeutics press release.
