“We were pleasantly surprised and very happy,” says Han van’ t Klooster, CEO of PharmaCytics, when winning the award. Five…
“We were pleasantly surprised and very happy," says Han van’ t Klooster, CEO of PharmaCytics, when winning the award. Five years ago he started, together with Gerrit Veeneman, the development of a promising technology with which medicines could be transformed into a new type of "prodrugs". To bring that technology to the market, they founded the company PharmaCytics in 2015.
Trust in technology has only grown since then. The award is a nice confirmation of this development, Van’t Klooster believes: “With our technology we link medicines with a connecting piece to a food. This new combination is recognized by the intestinal wall as a food and therefore goes through the intestinal wall to the blood much more easily than the original medicine. But once in the blood the drug is automatically cut loose again, after which it can do its job. With lower doses you get the same effect as with the higher doses that you first needed. Moreover, there are less side effects. Another important advantage is that we are able, for example, to convert an intravenous agent to an oral agent. ”
Platform technology PharmaCytics, with research locations at the Novio Tech Campus and the Pivot Park, has developed a so-called platform technology. The technology is applicable to many medicines. Van ’t Klooster:“ With synthetic chemistry we have made various molecular connection pieces, which we call "linkers". With these linkers we link medicines to foods. Consider the latter, for example, of a vitamin or amino acid. We now have a decent library of linkers. With all those linkers, we can already link many medicines to foods in the right way. The technology already offers an enormous number of application possibilities. ”
In addition to winning the Award, Van’t Klooster is also pleased with the valuable contacts that have emerged during the two-day Innovation for Health. “You speak with many other start-ups, but you also make contact with investors and pharmaceutical companies. This is important in view of the near future. Potential investors must know that we exist, what technology we have in house. And pharmaceuticals are our partners; they have medicines that we can improve. "
