Midatech Pharma

Could give us a little introduction of who you are and what you have done before.

I am currently working as the Chief Scientific Officer of Midatech Pharma. We are based out of Wales, and our area of expertise is long-acting and sortable drug formulations for the treatment of a variety of diseases, primarily in the field of oncology. Being a medical doctor with a background in obstetrics and gynecology, I've been in the pharmaceutical industry for close to 20 years now. After working in various roles across both large and small companies in the field of gene and cell therapy and cardiovascular disease treatments, I shifted my focus to oncological treatments over the last few years.

Describe the difficulties that pharmaceutical and CRO companies have while implementing AI in their products and undergoing a digital transition.

According to me,  the primary challenge is that pharmaceutical industry on the whole—apart from some novel companies that are basing their business models on advanced forms of AI like benevolent AI—is very old fashioned and  is heavily driven by regulatory guidelines. Most of them operate on a pen-and-paper based approach to reviewing, recording, and preserving data. This sometimes creates a significant barrier towards introducing digitalization into the operations of both small and large organizations. Another commonality between medium to large size pharmaceutical companies is that they tend to use numerous databases and platforms for various activities for a number of years at length. Consequently, when they go on to integrate AI based analysis into their workflows, they find themselves handling different formats of data that are very hard to merge into a standardized format that can be analyzed this type of activities because they're maybe not immediately seen as important ones. This takes a long time, and businesses frequently hesitate to allocate resources to these kinds of tasks as they do not deem it to be something that demands immediate attention.

What are some of the latest developments and cutting-edge technologies that are revolutionizing the pharmaceutical industry and being adopted by many businesses to enhance their operations? What sort of technology do you think they were?

One of the emerging trends that I have taken note of is the approach to repurposing old drugs which were the result of unsuccessful development—all by harnessing the power of data analytics. This is an interesting trend as it allows a faster access to a molecule because you don't need to create something completely from scratch, which takes years. You can instead deploy AI-powered tools on a particular targeted disease and identify a number of candidates that are already available, which ultimately speeds up the time to market for new drugs to the market.

What are some of the notable developments that pharmaceutical professionals and executives in this field should watch out for, and how can we improve the procedures in the organization from a marketing perspective?

I always vouch for allowing people to improvise and test their ideas. Since the best outcomes for all the companies come from individual employees or, small groups of people, their ideas need to be taken seriously and then put to test in order to bring them to fruition. My advice would be that if a company isn’t restricted by time constraints and financial hurdles, it should allow resources to explore new ideas that are generated within the company by its own employees. More often than not, these ideas turn into valuable products or processes that the company may use to reap benefits in the future.

Could you provide more information on how your company enhances the Bio Delivery of medications?

We as a company have three different platforms. They are named Q-Sphera ,Mida Solve and Mida core. Q Sphera is our polymer based long acting formulation PR platform that allows us to encapsulate a variety of compunds using polymers and various molecules. What is unique about this platform is that we can not only encapsulate small molecules that are traditionally used with polymers, but can actually release in large molecules in adequate doses such as proteins and antibody drug conjugates. We are exploring this domain for delivery of various types of drugs, including large molecules directly into the tumors. We also offer this platform for our external partners as well.

“One of the emerging trends that I have taken note of is the approach to repurposing old drugs which were the result of unsuccessful development—all by harnessing the power of data analytics”

Our other platform, Mida Solve allows us to utilize molecules that are hardly soluble on their own. We use this platform to utilize one of the drugs called PTA to directly deliver it into tumors in patients with glioblastoma, which is a deadly tumor formed in the brain. We administer the drug through a subcutaneously implanted pump and catheter. Over a course of three to six months, the medicine is gradually surged into the tumor. We treat patients with glioma in the same manner as we treat juvenile kids with midline glioma, which is a different kind of lethal tumor.

Finally, our third platform called My Core, which is a gold nanoparticle platform, facilitates the delivery of drugs with ultra-small gold nanoparticles (GNP). We deploy this platform in the delivery of methotrexate through subcutaneous ointment in patients diagnosed with psoriasis and atopic dermatitis. The aim is to enhance bio distribution and targeted drug delivery in an efficient manner, while elevating the standards of patient treatment on the way.