Decibel Therapeutics and Cocoon Biotech announced yesterday that the two companies plan to work together to research drug formulations optimized for transtympanic delivery to the ear.
The collaboration will make use of Cocoon’s silk fibroin platform and Decibel will have an option to exclusively license the technology on a program-by-program basis.
Cocoon is slated to receive an upfront license fee, development milestone payments and downstream royalties for each licensed program, the companies reported.
“The unique properties of silk protein as an excipient offer the potential for the prolonged and controlled release of a therapeutic compound into the middle ear, where it can then be absorbed into the inner ear,” John Lee, Decibel’s EVP of pharmaceutical development, said in prepared remarks.
“In those instances where transtympanic delivery of a drug is the right approach, we believe that Cocoon’s platform has the potential to maximize therapeutic exposure of our medications while minimizing the frequency of injections,” Lee said.
“Our silk fibroin platform has the potential to transform our ability to formulate, deliver, and stabilize molecules across a range of therapeutic applications in human health, animal health, consumer products, and agriculture, with resulting improvements in manufacturing processes, safety, and efficacy,” Cocoon CEO Dr. Ailis Tweed-Kent added.
