Lipid Vector Technology is the chemical linking of specific lipids (Lipid Vectors) to selected pharmaceutical agents (parent drugs). The new molecule thus created is a 'New Chemical Entity', or NCE protected by a composition of atter patent.
A large number of the Company's NCEs covering a wide range of therapeutic areas have in model systems demonstrated enhanced biological performance over the parent drug. Clavis Pharma has shown that a variety of drug characteristics can be improved by linking lipids to a drug.
Extensive research has been conducted to identify the range of lipids that can be used in LVT and further work has been done to select the optimal lipids from within this group. Research has shown that the length of a lipid's carbon backbone and the position and configuration of double bond(s) within the lipid greatly affect the performance of the LVT compound. Clavis Pharma can now reap the benefits of nearly twenty years of R&D to optimise these parameters in its LVT-based drugs.
The above figure shows the impact of lipid selection in an anti-viral (aciclovir, ACV) plaque-forming model. The activity is enhanced by a factor of 10,000 compared to the parent drug and 100 - 1,000 fold compared with other lipid derivatives.