twoXAR & KemPharm: Finding Drug Development Efficiencies in Technology Collaborations

by: Andrew A. Radin
CEO, twoXAR

Our software rapidly provides us and our development partners with lower risk starting points to launch first-in-class therapeutic programs. As mentioned in our Series A post, with SoftBank’s backing we are building a portfolio of self-launched as well as partnered disease programs. The path to an Investigational New Drug (IND) candidate differs for each program and includes a variety of IND-enabling work to optimize the drug candidate. In some cases, the best path to bring a new drug to patients is by developing a prodrug.

Since we met the KemPharm team last year, we have been impressed with their technology and experience. KemPharm’s LAT™ technology was developed to create new prodrugs that are designed to address unmet patient needs, improve the profile of drug product candidates and generate long-lived composition-of-matter patents. Their team’s previous experience in developing Vyvanse (ADHD treatment) at New River Pharmaceuticals and more recently winning FDA approval of Apadaz (Pain treatment) showcases their ability to identify the appropriate path to FDA approval and bring a new drug from discovery to patients.

Today, twoXAR and KemPharm announced a collaboration that enables the prodrug development path for twoXAR-discovered drug candidates, powered by KemPharm’s LAT™ technology. In establishing this collaboration, twoXAR formed Novoxar, Inc. (a wholly-owned subsidiary of twoXAR) to execute a research and license agreement with KemPharm. Under this agreement KemPharm will begin research to develop a prodrug that may form the basis of a target drug product candidate of Novoxar in a therapeutic area which has yet to be disclosed.

The twoXAR team is focused on making drug discovery and development more efficient. Establishing collaborations with companies that have platform technologies and executing pre-defined agreements with them lowers the barriers to moving drug candidates from discovery to the clinic. We will continue to build our pipeline through partnerships with drug developers and other companies with technologies that complement twoXAR’s approach, to increase the probability of a twoXAR-discovered treatment benefiting patients.