WILMINGTON, DE — Ashland Inc. (NYSE: ASH)recently launched a pharmaceutical excipient designed to improve the manufacturing and oral delivery of peptides and other low-permeability drugs, positioning the specialty chemicals company to capture demand from expanding GLP-1 and biologics development pipelines.
The product, Permexa sodium caprate, is intended to increase intestinal permeability while addressing manufacturing challenges that can complicate the transition of oral biologic formulations from laboratory development to commercial-scale production.
Pharmaceutical companies are investing in oral alternatives to injectable therapies across diabetes, weight loss, metabolic disorders and other indications. That shift has increased demand for formulation technologies capable of allowing peptide and biologic medicines to pass through the intestinal barrier while remaining suitable for large-scale manufacturing.
Ashland developed Permexa using an intellectual property-protected process intended to improve powder flow, compressibility and formulation consistency while retaining sodium caprate’s permeability-enhancing properties.
Those characteristics are aimed at improving tablet manufacturing and reproducibility as drug candidates move through development and toward commercialization.
“The rapid growth of oral peptide development is creating demand for excipients that support both biological performance and pharmaceutical manufacturability,” Alessandra Faccin, Ashland’s senior vice president and general manager of Life Sciences, said.
Ashland reported receiving interest in the product before its commercial launch from pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and contract development and manufacturing organizations. The activity included product sampling, technical evaluations, benchmarking studies, formulation work and pre-launch sales.
The company did not disclose sales figures, pricing or financial targets for Permexa.
Ashland also plans additional products for oral biologic drug development as part of a broader expansion of its pharmaceutical excipient portfolio.
Caroline Cooreman, strategy director for Ashland’s Life Sciences business, said the company has “multiple additional products in the pipeline” and sees opportunities to combine the oral biologics portfolio with its existing vinyl pyrrolidone and derivatives business.
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