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Award-winning Teesside-based particle engineering specialist Micropore Technologies has just announced a Licence Agreement with South Korea based G2GBIO Inc to deploy its patented membrane technology, for the manufacture of G2GBIO’s sustained release pharmaceutical products.

G2GBIO specialises in the development of long-acting microsphere products.

Micropore’s membrane-based encapsulation system will complement G2GBIO’s existing InnoLAMP technology for the manufacture of monodisperse microspheres composed of various polymers for long-acting drugs for the treatment of various medical conditions such as central nervous system diseases, including dementia or schizophrenia, and chronic diseases, such as cancer and diabetes.

Micropore’s patented high-throughput membrane encapsulation technology will allow G2GBIO to further scale up GMP production of its encapsulated products enabling the manufacture of 1kg/hour of emulsion with precisely uniform particle sizes.

This throughput equates to 1,000 vials for Alzheimer’s disease treatment or about 30,000 vials for animal neutering drugs. According to G2G Bio, no other company in South Korea can currently achieve these scales of production.

Because Micropore’s patented technology is based on a crossflow technique utilising tubular membranes, with no moving parts, when it comes to manufacturing microcapsules the minimal shear forces involved protects sensitive ingredients from processing damage – significantly reducing wastage (which can be up to 50% using

traditional encapsulation techniques). Micropore’s equipment also reduces processing energy by around a 30% – again contributing a positive impact on the end cost of drug products.

Today’s news follows an announcement earlier this year of a similar licensing agreement between Micropore Technologies and Netherlands-based pharmaceutical producer InnoCore Technologies.

Through enabling pharmaceutical companies such as G2GBIO and InnoCore to process mono-dispersed micro-particles at higher throughputs, Micropore’s equipment is enabling the scaleup to commercially viable volumes of pharmaceutical products with precisely controllable dose levels with narrower release time parameters because unwanted rupture variability in the products can be virtually eliminated.

Micropore’s has won multiple international awards for its innovative membrane-based technology, most recently an Excellence in Pharma Award for Membrane Crystallisation of APIs at the 2020 CPhI Pharma Awards.

Dai Hayward, Micropore’s CEO said:

“We are delighted with yet another symbiotic collaboration with a global partner to demonstrate the inherent advantages of our technology in GMP applications.

“Our capability of delivering near-monodispersity in encapsulated particles cost-efficiently at commercially realistic volumes will help G2GBIO to capitalise on their innovative formulations.”

Heeyong Lee, G2GBIO’s CEO said:

“We are pleased to collaborate with Micropore to develop various monodisperse microsphere drugs efficiently.

“We believe that our close relationship with Micropore has increased the likelihood of successful clinical and commercial production of a variety of microsphere drugs under development, including our innovative one-month long acting Alzheimer’s drug.”