Although it's only about two years old, Warwick's Adtech Pharma has seen some major investment come to fruition recently, thanks to its flagship product under development, new eye drops that use a synthetic cannabinoid to lower eye pressure in patients and could protect their optical nerves.
In June 2021, Las Vegas company Ault Global Holdings Inc. announced a deal to acquire up to 40% of the current equity in Adtech Pharma Inc for $3 million. Just last week, the company reported a new $1.1 million in funding.
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Founded as a virtual company in 2020, Adtech Pharma comprises four people; Lex Adjei, Adtech’s vice president of R&D; Iok-Hou Pang, Adtech’s VP of product development; Ping Chang, Adtech’s VP of operations; and Robert Kupper, Adtech’s president and CEO.
According to Kupper, the company was built to outsource everything from formulation to product development to production-specific cannabinoids, but development of the initial product started with the four principles. Each carrying years of experience in the pharmaceutical field, they met while working with THC (the active ingredient in marijuana) for another company. While the team did look into eyedrops for glaucoma there, the product was fraught with stability issues and was ultimately dropped by the company. After leaving, Kupper said, he decided to return to the idea.
"I started to look at using a different type of cannabinoid, which is far more stable but also more more difficult to formulate," he said. "We're still working on it and it takes time but we were recently able to get the forumation start up and we're ready to take the next steps, placebo bathes and then onto animal studies."
According to Adtech Pharma, this new product Nabilone (aka NB-110) uses synthetic cannabinoids in the place of a preservative. It also acts as a CB1/CB2 receptor agonist, lowers intraocular pressure of glaucoma patients and could protect optical nerves.
From internal studies, Kupper said NB-110 could potentially be seven to 10 times more effective in treating the symptoms of glaucoma.
