Aphios Pharma is Now Developing Cannabis-Based Treatment for Opioid Addition
Aphios Corporation is a Woburn, MA-based, clinical-stage biotechnology company that is developing green enabling technology platforms to improve drug discovery, manufacturing, nanotechnology drug delivery, and pathogenic safety. Aphios is delivering enhanced therapeutic products to improve quality-of-life and treat chronic diseases in an environmentally-sustainable manner. Utilizing medicinal plants and marine organisms, Aphios develops therapies that treat cancer as a chronic rather than acute disease, providing less toxic and mostly plant-based natural drugs. Aphios’ nanoformulations of Taxol® and Taxotere® may be used in acute settings until long-term preventative solutions are developed, and provide supportive care for cancer patients undergoing acute treatment.
Aphios Corporation’s SuperFluids™ enabling technology platforms can improve the discovery and manufacturing of natural pharmaceuticals and quality-of-life medicines (dietary supplements); improve the delivery of poorly water-soluble anticancer compounds and biologics, such as recombinant proteins and nucleic acids (siRNA); ensure the viral and pathogenic safety of human plasma, blood products, and biologics such as monoclonal antibodies; and additionally enhance the pretreatment of cellulosic biomass for manufacturing biofuels and biochemicals. Aphios’ SuperFluids™ technology platforms are based on exploiting the physiochemical properties of near-critical, critical and supercritical fluids, such as carbon dioxide, with or without polar cosolvents such as ethanol.
At its founding in 1993, Aphios Corporation elected to focus about ten percent of its research efforts on investigating natural therapeutic remedies. Using nature, marine organisms, and terrestrial plants as intuitive “guides” to fighting cancer and aging has become a core premise of the company. Aphios Pharma, a subsidiary of Aphios Corporation, is currently raising equity capital to develop an FDA-approved, cannabis-based drug for treating opioid addiction, which is classified as a highly unmet Central Nervous System (CNS) disorder. Aphios Pharma is seeking to overcome the hydrophobic properties of cannabis that inhibit drug development by nanoencapsulating cannabinoids in biodegradable polymer nanospheres using Aphios’ patented SuperFluids™ technologies.