The basic unit of life, the cell is a well-compartmentalized and operationally complex structure. Access to the cell interior is controlled by the cell membrane and inevitably anything that alters its integrity is detrimental to cell viability. Yet, entering the cells either for delivering drugs or probes is fundamental in both biological research and pharmaceutical development. In the past 5 years, as part of an existing ERC project where we have developed a new approach for entering almost any living cell and delivering several kinds of cargos to the interior without affecting cell activity or viability. This has been achieved by taking inspiration from natural carriers such as viruses and bacteria, to create synthetic and safer approaches using polymeric materials. The ERC-PoC Endonaut proposal focused on two applications, which we are now at the investment stage to become lucrative commercial opportunities. The first application is the delivery of probes to study live cells and the second is the delivery of bioactive molecules into clinically-relevant cells to enable the development of new drugs for several therapeutic areas including cancer and immunotherapy.
The project plan comprehended commercial and technical activities in both the Intracellular Reagents and Drug Discovery projects. We had been able to secure the interest of international distributors and direct customers for the former and partners (later licensees) for the latter. The technical activities will be to support the contracts that are gained, scaling up the synthetic processes from laboratory to commercial scale and to diversify the product range for the intracellular reagents. Underlying this we have been able to development new IP relating to the EndoNaut technology.
Our main objective was to enable the translation process of EndoNaut technology from the laboratory to the market. From a business development perspective, we have been attending BioTrinity to promote our technology. The successful completion of the preliminary commercial and technical phases, allowed to incorporate a spin out company SomaNautix ltd., aimed to maximise the potential of the technology.
