Transitioning from intravenous (IV) to boosted oral taxane therapy can transform the standard of care for cancer patients. Modra’s oral formulation has the potential to be a safer, patient-friendly, and cost-efficient alternative to IV-administered anti-cancer drugs.

Our proprietary boosted taxane approach improves the delivery, bioavailability, and tolerability of taxanes. Taxane therapies, which are currently administered primarily through intravenous infusions, are extremely 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 advancing optimized tablet formulations that have good solubility properties and that are not only efficient in terms of size and number of tablets the patient has to take but also improve the pharmacokinetic profile and eliminate the toxic excipients typically found in intravenous formulations.

We have demonstrated the benefits of Modra’s approach in a Phase IIb clinical trial with ModraDoc006/r for patients with metastatic prostate cancer. Patients on intravenous docetaxel must visit a treatment center every three weeks and often endure side effects like fatigue and neuropathy, which may disrupt daily life and are sometimes irreversible. In the Phase IIb trial, Modra’s lead product candidate showed similar efficacy with fewer serious side effects and offers the convenience of being an oral pill taken at home. We have secured broad global patent coverage for all parts of our technology.