Another Liquidia Asset: Call it Lq3, With More to Come

Microscopic photos of various Liquidia particles and, second from left, a mold for round ones. Liquidia bases its businesses on the discovery that where particles are concerned, form defines function. Courtesy of Liquidia Technologies

Liquidia Technologies, a Research Triangle Park company that’s turning its unique PRINT nanobiotechnology platform into a license to print money selling disease-fighting “stealth” weapons, has made another baby.

Liquidia, itself spun out of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2004 by superstar scientists Joe DeSimone and Ed Samulski, has “re-spun” its second new pharmaceutical company. This one  specifically targets yet-undisclosed “oral health conditions.”

The new company, called Lq3 Pharmaceuticals, leverages Liquidia’s Particle Replication In Non-Wetting Templates (PRINT) technology. The $10 million in Series A funding to set up Lq3 came from Canaan Partners, a Bay Area VC group that also invested in Liquidia and in Envisia Therapeutics, the eye-disease specialty company that was Liquidia’s first spin-out. Kyle Chenet, formerly vice president of corporate development for Liquidia and Envisia, has been named CEO of Lq3.

Lq3: a rePRINT for the mouth

Like Envisia, Lq3 will employ the PRINT micro- and nanoparticle system. PRINT uses specialized printing presses to squeeze materials into microscopic molds that allow the companies to control the size, shape and chemistry of the resulting particles. That combination of size, shape and chemistry determines the therapeutic activity of the particle.

The innovative products have the potential to address significant unmet needs in a wide range of medical conditions.

“We continue to be excited by the progress we are making across multiple programs using PRINT technology and Lq3 is a direct result of these advancements,” said Neal Fowler, CEO of Envisia and Liquidia. “The formation of Lq3 creates an opportunity to independently focus the use of this technology on the development of innovative solutions in another growing market.”

NCBiotech supports Liquidia's evolution

The North Carolina Biotechnology Center, supported by North Carolina taxpayers, has propped Liquidia along its way to success. NCBiotech provided a post-doctoral Ph.D. Industrial Fellow to join the company. NCBiotech also included Liquidia and Envisia in meetings the Center arranged with investors. Liquidia presented its goodies at the Center’s 2012 Research Triangle Fly-In, and Envisia presented at NCBiotech's VC event in New York the following year. 

Liquidia’s technology, based on techniques used in semiconductor manufacturing, is so game-changing that the company became the first equity investment made by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It can be used for vaccines, anti-cancer therapies – a huge array of applications. Liquidia has also drawn investments from major pharmaceutical companies that want to use the PRINT technology on their own pipeline products.

Concurrently, Liquidia is slicing market niches from various applications of its technology, and turning them into individual companies. Liquidia's platform can address a huge array of therapeutic markets. But given the time and expense of the approval process for any new therapy (billions of dollars and a decade or more), every life science company needs to build from a "most likely to succeed" product. Consider it "the low-hanging fruit" that enables the follow-on products.

“The oral health market is poised for significant growth, driven in part by an increased understanding of the linkage between oral inflammation and infection and systemic diseases such as diabetes, obesity and other inflammatory diseases,” said Chenet.

“I am honored to have the opportunity to lead Liquidia’s next promising spin-out and to leverage our unparalleled technology to develop novel medicines that can have a significant impact on patients’ lives.”