The chief executive of Enable Injections highlighted opportunities that the company has identified in the delivery of biologics.
“I think you’re all familiar with the challenges for subcutaneous delivery of biologics. The concentrations are getting higher. The volumes are getting bigger,” Mike Hooven said. “And what we know is that you can have a great deal of discomfort if you inject too quickly, if you’re not sensitive to the patient tissue back-pressure, and you can actually have skin damage if your pressure is too high.”
Hooven told the audience at PODD that his company’s partners are looking for two things: a collaborative partner early in the clinical development process and a company with a platform to offer.
Enable Injections encourages its pharma partners to conduct their own user studies, Hooven said, noting that the company wants its partners to see for themselves what users think of their on-body injectors.
“These are just some of the features that we’re hearing from the pharma partners, that they want user acceptance, it needs to be customizable and it needs to accept the highest range of volumes, viscosities, delivery rates,” he explained.
The company’s on-body injector lets pharmaceutical companies use their own primary container and is capable of delivering up to 50 milliliters of product.
“We allow you to utilize existing primary container closure, whether that’s a vial, a syringe, a pre-filled syringe,” Hooven said.
“The patient transfers the drug from the container to the injector. And this is one of those slightly more complex questions. What we found is the patients actually prefer a patient-loading device over a pre-filled device. And the pharma companies are finding that out also.”
Enable Injections has executed more than 30 preliminary agreements with partners and is in talks with nearly every major biotech and biopharma company, according to the company’s chief executive.
“We are currently executing full commercialization projects for multiple pharma partners right now,” Hooven said.
“I would encourage you, if you haven’t already, to engage us in a feasibility program and a clinical development program and actually get the input from your users. We’re finding it’s overwhelmingly preferred and not only by the users but by the pharma partners as well.”
