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Oak Crest receives $20 million to study intravaginal ring ART delivery
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The Oak Crest Institute of Science in Pasadena, Calif., has been awarded a $20 million NIH grant to develop an intravaginal ring delivering ART to prevent the sexual transmission of HIV in women.
The 5-year grant is funded under the NIH U19 Program. Oak Crest is the lead institution in a collaboration that also includes researchers from the CDC, University of Texas Medical Branch, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, University of Colorado Boulder, Scripps Research Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, Vanderbilt University, Miriam Hospital and Auritec Pharmaceuticals.
“We are fortunate to be part of a stellar team of investigators from all over the country,” Marc Baum, PhD, president and senior faculty at Oak Crest, said in a press release. “Through this partnership, I feel confident that we will meet our goal of using a novel screening process to scientifically determine the best-performing candidates in order to advance them rapidly into clinical trials.”
Baum and researchers at Oak Crest and the CDC developed a pod-intravaginal ring platform that can deliver five different drugs simultaneously and at independently controlled doses. Most of the current intravaginal rings cannot deliver multiple-drug combinations.
“The modular design of our pod-intravaginal rings allows us to accelerate the development of prototypes, a critical element to testing many combinations as part of this program,” Baum said in the press release. “Our technology platform also has the crucial advantage of scalability in manufacturing as the majority of the fabrication steps are identical regardless of the drugs in the combination. The scalability and potential for economical manufacture will be crucial for any product to be used in the developing world.”