Intravenous (IV) taxane therapy is a globally recognized cornerstone of cancer treatment. Despite its widespread use and status as a critical component of standard-of-care for many solid tumors, the taxane class of anti-cancer therapy is hampered by its severe side effects and high-burden IV administration schedule.

“Modra” stands for “Modulated Oral Drug Absorption” and for our commitment to transforming taxane therapy by developing improved therapies that are safer, better tolerated, and can be conveniently taken at home in tablet form. We are applying our proprietary platform to develop next-generation oral taxanes with the goal of improving the therapeutic outcomes and everyday lives of cancer patients undergoing taxane therapy.

The company was founded as a spin-out of the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) and MC Slotervaart Hospital in Amsterdam.

Taxane therapies, which are currently administered primarily through intravenous infusions, are very difficult to deliver orally. Taxane molecules have properties that make tablet formulation challenging, including very low water solubility. Additionally, because taxanes are substrates for CYP3A4—resulting in rapid metabolism and drug deactivation—and/or P-gp, which pumps them out of cells, achieving sufficient bioavailability presents another major challenge.

Modra is developing optimized tablet formulations that are not only efficient in terms of size and number of tablets that the patient takes but also eliminate the toxic excipients that are typically part of intravenous formulations. Most importantly these tables have good water solubility and are readily dissolved in the gut. These taxane tablets are co-administered with a boosting agent, ritonavir, to boost systemic and intratumoral levels of docetaxel exposure in patients.

We are currently developing a broad pipeline of oral taxane drug candidates in the clinic and have already achieved compelling tolerability data. Docetaxel, paclitaxel and cabazitaxel are the most widely used taxane therapeutics prescribed to treat various solid tumors, including prostate, breast and lung cancer. These taxanes currently have to be administered via regular intravenous administration and are associated with substantial toxicity that is worsened by their pharmacokinetic profile and the required excipients in their formulations.